


Entrapment

by theviolonist



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: F/F, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-17 19:52:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New royalty, like everything else, has its consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so: I need to occupy my time before the show comes back from break, and what better than an alternative season 4 to do it? I just want to take a crack at what the rivalry between Bea and Franky could be, and poke around all the things the show left us with.
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** I haven't seen _Prisoner_ , so this won't be canon-compliant. Besides, since this is centered around Erica and Franky and I want it to end more or less happily, some bad things will probably happen to Bea, for which I apologize. I like her too, but I also like when bad things happen to people, which is what the show is all about anyway. So, yeah. Oh, and I'm not all that interested in Vera and Fletch, so they probably won't figure much in this.
> 
> Enjoy!

There's a long moment of silence in the corridors - charged, heavy silence - before the noise erupts again. Franky watches; she will remember, from now on, that this is what her world looks like when a woman is marched out covered in blood. Could've been her. 

But it wasn't her. She comes back to her cell, listening with one ear to Kim's fast-paced gossip. Liz throws her a few accusatory glances over the course of the night, but Franky only grins, far too used to it by now. Oh, she's done things people don't approve of. Things -

"Franky."

Erica. She's at the door, not leaning against the doorframe this time. Vera is close behind, pretending not to look. Franky rests _A Tramway Named Desire_ open on her chest. She swipes her tongue over her teeth. Erica likes that; she flinches.

"Governor," Franky drawls. "Didn't think I'd see you here so soon, after our little... meeting."

Erica doesn't give anything. Her jaw is set. 

"I just wanted to know how the women were doing."

Franky laughs. She laughs a lot, but with Erica, unlike with others, she's not laughing _at_ her, rather at some private joke Erica refuses to admit they share. Although now -

"And you're asking me?"

Erica shrugs. "You're top dog now. Now that Jacs is gone. I want you to keep me informed."

"We all know how _that_ ends, Miss Davidson."

Erica's eyes flash. She doesn't like carelessness, rashness. Franky could swear she's already torn the kiss to shreds and stored it somewhere she doesn't have to admit to anyone it exists. Good. Let it titillate her. But Franky's not a patient woman.

"I want to know everything that happens. I care about the women," Erica says, and Franky winks, "I care about -" _you_. She won't say it, though. "I don't want another riot."

Vera is still hovering. Erica is constantly drumming her fingers on her skirt-clad thigh, perhaps unconsciously, as though she wanted to swat a fly away. This is amusing. 

"I'll send for you tomorrow," says Erica, careful not to make it sound like a promise. 

It does anyway. 

*

Doreen is manning the kettle. It seems to be the only thing she does now, since Kaiya left. But then, Liz isn't exactly in a position to judge. 

"Hey."

Doreen looks over at her, faintly surprised. She forces a smile, only the shadow of her usual cheery grins. "Hey. Tea?"

"Sure."

There's silence as Doreen pours the tea in both their mugs, careful not to spill any of the scalding water on her fingers. But her hands don't tremble. No one's hands tremble here, except for the junkies'. "Here you go."

"Thanks."

They sip their tea in silence. Usually it's more or less comfortable, but the door to Bea's cell is ajar, open wide enough for them to see that it's been turned over, the trinkets thrown carelessly on the floor, the sheets twisted and ripped. Since the first time, though, Bea's learned - now she carries the picture with her, under her clothes.

"What'd you think will happen now?" Doreen's voice is scared. 

Liz shrugs. "Bea's coming back next week."

"What about Franky?"

Liz's mouth twists. "Franky is the reason for all this."

Still, it's the same quid pro quo: the both of them know enough to know they're not leaders; there's no doubt Franky will take advantage of the time Bea is away to try and cling to her place at the top. They won't stop her. It's not who they are, and besides, Franky's trouble, always has been. 

"I guess," Doreen says wonderingly. 

Liz hums her agreement, wise, takes a sip of tea, and that's that.

*

Tomorrow. The weather is appropriate, heavy, with a storm rumbling with heat and water but not quite breaking out yet, instead beating the sky with its rolling grey clouds. Franky grins up at it, her eyes glinting. 

When Erica gets in she's sprawled on the chair, as usual, as though it were her private waiting room. Maybe it is. 

"It's not going to be easy for you," Erica says. "When Bea comes back."

She knows what it takes: Franky clams up, her face shuts off. She looks hard. She is hard. Dangerous. 

"That's none of your business, eh?"

Franky will be fine. She was fine with Jacs, she'll be fine with Bea too. Truth is, it won't be easy, but she thrives on this, the confrontation – 

"It is," says Erica, jaw set. "In fact, that's why I'm here, and I want to help you."

"What are you gonna do? Put me in protection?"

She's laughing. This is easier. Throwing tennis balls, like they've been doing since the beginning. 

"Franky, you know I think you have great potential, I -"

Franky rises from her slouch. Close, always closer, leaning over the table with her eyes languid and her arms braced, that fucking kiss like a weight between them, a cloud of palpable heat. 

"You what? You're gonna _protect_ me, Erica? One kiss and you're already my knight in shining armor? If I'd known that was all it took -"

Erica's jaw sets. "Franky. Don't."

She's always like that, with the orders, but Franky knows – there are screws out there, just outside the door, and Erica could call but she doesn't, instead she stays in here with her knees crossed and she says, _Franky. Don't._

Franky fakes innocence, pouts. "What do you mean?" she says, suddenly light, for Erica's benefit, really, because she knows the push-and-pull, hot and cold routine is really what gets her hot, growling followed by lighthearted teasing, the hot press of Franky's mouth followed by that swipe of her tongue. "You mean you don't want me to do this," and she reaches a hand, touches Erica's throat again, the same spot with two fingers, Erica's irises overtaking her eyes, extraordinarily black, "is that what you mean?"

There's a moment where everything stills. Erica doesn't move, her breath ragged, and Franky feels like she's holding a flame at the end of her fingers, waiting for it to ignite Erica's body. And it will. 

But then – "Get her out of here," Erica croaks, making a bad job at appearing composed, and Vera's holding onto Franky's hands, not even pretending not be disapproving.

Franky would feel sorry, she would, but then she remembers that there's nothing she likes more than making trouble.

*

Lunchtime. The storm still hasn't broken out, and the grounds are bathed in sickly yellow light, spanning over the concrete grey in large splotches. The room isn't silent, never is, but it's brewing with a tension that puts everyone's nerves on edge. Even Kim, who is usually so cheery, has barely touched her food. Only Boomer is indifferent to the changes. She goes about her meal, cramming it in like it's the last. 

Franky is balancing her chair. Four legs on the ground, then two. One. Liz is watching her from the corner of her eye. Franky's smirking, but she's not eating. She's assessing the situation.

Simone is holding onto Jacs's table, even though by the end she didn't support her - no one did. Still, there are three women there, Jacs's old hard-hitters. She's taking her sweet time choosing her side, and Franky can't abide by that. 

She stands up. Everyone looks. The air is tense, electric. The screws' hands fly to their belts, ready to lunge is something goes south. 

Franky swaggers to Simone's table.

"Hey, sunshine," she says to her, grinning like she does, like something is going to get broken. She cocks her hip. "Keeping Mama Bear's seat hot? I don't want to disappoint you, love, but I don't think she's coming back." Her face twists, falsely contrite. 

She produces an apple from somewhere and takes a clean, hard bite in it. For effect.

Simone looks around - to assure her support, or so everyone assumes. Then her gaze turns back on Franky, mocking. "I'm just waiting for someone to take charge."

The room erupts in crowing laughter. Franky blanches. Quick as a wink, she leans over the table, menacing. "Yeah, well," she says, her voice a hot whisper, "you better choose sides soon, or there might be an... accident involving one or two of your girls here."

She glances at the other women. It's a good move - Jacs wouldn't have flinched, she didn't care, probably barely knew their names, but Simone is marginally more humane. If there was a fight... it would be nasty, but Franky's still got more people behind her. Where Jacs's followers were driven by fear or desperation, Franky's are loyal. She's got charisma; people like her.

Will arrives at the table - finally, those screws, so slow, it's no wonder they get killed so fast, Liz thinks - and grabs Franky's arm. "Let's go, Doyle," he says roughly. 

Franky dislodges her arm from his grip. She looks angry, for a second, like she might lash out - but then she pulls her hands up in fake innocence, says, tongue-in-cheek, "Calm down, officer. Everything's fine - just a friendly chat with mommy's girl over there, 's all."

Will makes his usual face - _I don't care about your bullshit, Doyle._

Franky laughs, then saunters back to her chair. The faces around her reflect what she must know: her days are numbered, unless she does something drastic. Then again, Franky can always be counted on to wreak havoc. 

*

Only yesterday she was parading in front of the prison smiling to journalists. She'd have done better keeping her mouth shut, obviously, but Erica's always been like that, ambitious and headstrong. Not unlike - but no. It's no use thinking about that kiss.

The point is, the phones have been ringing non-stop since this morning. 'Another death,' they parrot, 'twice in six months, Miss Davidson. Weren't you supposed to keep us safe? Isn't that what you said?' and it's not like Erica can exactly say that it was a poor chain of circumstances.

It's satisfying, though, in a way, that Jacs is dead. Sure, Bea's gone haywire and when she comes back there's no way to predict what kind of top dog she'll be, but Jacs Holt was a menace. Though now it's going to be Bea against Franky, or rather, Fanky against Bea. That can't be good either. It might be manageable, if Erica can get Franky to cooperate, but it won't be easy. 

The phone rings again. Why doesn't she have a secretary? She can't take care of everything on her own, for Christ's sake. Fucking regional funding.

"Yes?" she snaps. 

"It's Derek," says the voice, and Erica can feel a headache starting between her eyes. _Channing_. Just what she needed.

"Sir," she says, trying not to sound as curt as she feels. 

"We need to talk." 

Yes - they do, don't they? Erica remembers, in painful, ashamed detail, standing by the fence yesterday and smiling for the cameras. The wind was hot and brushing against her thighs; she was wearing her pumps and she'd thought about Franky, of course. 

_... I can confidently reassure myself of our safety, and deliver on my promise to you, to rehabilitate, not only our prisoners, but the way that we work here at Wentworth._

How pompous she'd sounded. How self-assured. _Everyone is safe_ , that's what she was saying, of course - and then Bea had to go and kill Jacs. 

Shit. Erica sets the receiver down, assenting absently to something Channing says. What is with the weather? It's so hot, and this storm won't break. Now the office is unbearable: every time Erica looks up the first thing she sees is that corner where Franky pressed her against the wall and kissed her, kissed back, whatever the fuck that was -

"Shit."

*

It's not the time to be reading, but that's what Franky's doing. She thinks stirring the pot won't help anything, or maybe she doesn't quite know what end to pull on this. The women started losing their respect from Franky when she got that scar, then when Jacs burned her hand. Franky can follow their reasoning: no use for a leader that's so easily crushed. 

Eventually she throws her book over. She's been reading the same page for half an hour, it's no use. But that's a problem, too - she actually needs to study, if she wants a chance at reducing her sentence. Besides, studying means Erica.

(It says something, that Franky doesn't even think about letting Bea be top dog. But she has her reasons: for one, Bea will make a shitty leader, because she's either too empathic or batshit crazy, and neither are good leadership qualities; and secondly, last time Franky let someone dominate her that person ended up with a faceful of hot oil. No. She takes care of herself now. And if it includes running the show, well.)

"Kim!"

Kim saunters in, her hip cocked. There's a hint of apprehension in her demeanor, but it's to be expected, with all the shit going on. 

"Come here."

Kim crawls over Franky's lap, and instantly her body heats up, slows from its worried frenzy into something languid and familiar. This is exactly what she needs right now. 

Franky tips her head back, closes her eyes, and tries to block out the outside noise. 

*

When Erica comes in her office, Channing is waiting with a glass of whiskey he probably took from her bottle in the closet, wearing his trademark I-told-you-so smirk. What a pig. 

"Erica."

 _Miss Davidson_ , Erica wants to snap. 

"Mister Channing," she says with a charming smile. 

She sits opposite him, crossing her legs. Channing's eyes flit to her thighs. "You're in trouble," he says when he tears his eyes away. Funny, how with Franky it feels like heat laving at her skin -

"Sir, I think the most important thing here is that we found Meg Jackson's killer. I agree that the murder was unfortunate, and it will take some time for the public to forget it, but I'm confident that with -"

Channing chuckles, looking impressed and horny. He crosses his legs too, nonchalantly. Erica doesn't look. "Unfortunate? It's the second time in six months that someone dies under your watch, Erica, and the board is starting to ask me if putting a _lawyer_ ," - it's the way he says it, _law_ yer, like it's a dirty word, "in charge was a sensible idea. I need to bring them something to tide them over, I'm sure you understand."

Of course she understands. She understands ten times better than him what forces are at work here. 

But he continues, wholly unperturbed, "I'm sure you can give me something to satisfy me." His eyes glint. 

_Satisfy me._ Erica's gotten this look dozens of time, it means - _get in bed with me and I'll sweep this under the rug._ (Mark gets this look, sometimes, too, or at least a variation of it, and Erica has no scruples using it to her advantage to get out of tricky conversations.)

There's a silence. The idea is brewing in Erica's mind, and she could pretend she hasn't thought of it before, but she would be lying.

"What if I could promise you that my star pupil," she says it with a bit of irony, just enough to be palatable, "Franky Doyle, you remember her, will have completed a semester of her LLB by the end of the year? Given her results at the HSC, no one will object to her following accelerated classes; I'll tutor her myself. We can make her a poster child for Wentworth, she has charisma and she's a good public speaker. Would that satisfy you?"

Channing looks like he might renew his advice - _don't get too close_ -, but eventually he just quirks an eyebrow, like he has some private joke on Erica. Whatever it is, Erica doesn't want to know. 

"I'm not sure you're in the position to make promises," he drawls. "Last time didn't end too well."

"I am and I will. I -" _trust her_ "have faith in Franky. She can be controlled."

Channing nods. He finally stands up, offering his hand to Erica. "Then it's a deal," he says. "I'll take your proposal to the board, and see what they say."

"Thank you, sir."

Channing glances at the window before leaving. "I should've brought an umbrella," he remarks. 

Erica has one in her closet, but she doesn't offer.

*

She's ushered into a room. It's probably a police station, Bea thinks, but really she doesn't care: it's only another prison, a pit stop until they send her back to Wentworth. They'll tell her she's guilty, reassess new charges. No, she doesn't care. 

Revenge. They lied, the people who told her it didn't feel good, didn't feel liberating. Sure, her little girl is still dead, but now Jacs is there too, spread on a morgue slab with a pen jabbed in her neck. In a sick way, she was right: Bea _is_ capable of taking a life. Her head is clear. She feels invigorated. She regrets nothing. 

They clean the blood, ask questions she answers perfunctorily, absently, without really paying attention. People, all sorts of people, insist on detailing for her how wrong what she's done is, how it is necessary that she pay, but she looks at them head-on, her eyes saying, _you don't know anything._ They don't. You don't know death until you've stuck a pen in Jacs Holt's neck, that's the sad truth. 

Eventually they let her go, and she sits in yet another waiting-room, waiting to be processed. The receptionist calls her name. Bea stands up. 

The receptionist glances up, regards her quickly. "Bea. It's a nice name."

Outside, the storm is finally breaking, lashing a heavy onslaught of hot water on everything and everyone, the water turning the grey concrete almost black. Bea smiles. "Yeah," she croaks. "It is."


	2. Chapter 2

The heat is crushing. Now everyone wishes it were still raining, but even the spare, coarse grass in the yard isn't wet anymore. The women are fanning themselves with their hands and their contraband newspapers.

"When d'you think she'll be back?" Doreen asks the table. 

Not far from them, Franky twitches, but she pretends not to have heard. Shielding her eyes with the palm of her hand, she squints up at the sun.

"Few days, I reckon," Kim says.

It's still strange, this: everyone knows Kim and Boomer will never leave Franky, and while Bea's away it's safer for Doreen and Liz to still hang around them. But they're not a _family_ anymore. The defiance from the first days is back, thick and uncomfortable between them. Franky, faithful to herself, pretends not to notice by being as snappy and carelessly cruel as she can. She's afraid. 

"It's been two weeks," Doreen says. 

Liz shrugs. "We're already in a prison, mate. Doesn't make much difference that she killed Jacs."

Kim nods. "Good riddance. The screws probably had a party for her," she laughs, showing white teeth and her usual lack of gravitas when it comes to murder. "And the gov, too."

There's a short spell of silence, then Kim points at the fence. "Speak of the devil," she says. 

Franky's head snaps up, but she doesn't run. Erica walks slowly along the fence, like she has for the past two weeks. When her eyes meet Franky's, she turns away quickly, leans to say something to the officer who's walking beside her. Franky snorts. It's ridiculous, even more ridiculous than that game where Erica pretends not to want this, not to want her. 

It shouldn't feel unfair. It's been a long time since Franky's felt entitled to anything, because that way lay madness and disappointment - but maybe for a second there she let herself go. Hope. It was stupid. Still, did Erica have to do this _now_?

She chews on her gum harder than she intended, manages to bite her own tongue. "Shit," she snaps, spitting the gum at the ground. 

She surveys the yard. She hates this place, who doesn't, but someone needs to be in charge - _she_ needs to be in charge. There's just no other way this can work. 

"Let's go," she says to the girls. 

Liz and Doreen don't move. Kim trots to Franky, light on her feet, and Boomer painstakingly disengages her head from her crossed arms, groaning. The heat makes everyone slow.

*

Last time the corridor was endless. There was blood on Bea's T-shirt, and she'd felt calm, not like peace, but like all the mayhem inside had suddenly stopped and left her clean, perfectly empty. 

It's different now. It's going to be, from now on. It isn't that surprising, actually: every time Bea walked down this corridor her life changed irrevocably. 

"You're going to stay here until your trial," Miss Davidson says, walking besides Bea, her heels clicking on the floor. "We're going to return you to your unit, and then we'll see depending on what you get charged with and what sentence you get. We might have to move you to another unit, or even another prison."

 _You'd like that, wouldn't you?_ Bea thinks about saying. But it's not her style. 

"Okay," she says instead. 

She accepts the new clothes, the strip search, bends and opens her mouth, her hands, to prove that she's not concealing anything, weapons, drugs. By now it's almost a second nature: the humiliation is no longer the burning sting it used to be but a low, background ache.

Miss Davidson turns around as she prepares to leave, her back already half-turned. "You can go back to your cell," she says, as if there was somewhere else for Bea to go. 

Bea nods anyway. 

So here she is: the corridor, and Debbie is dead, and the women are lined up against the wall, with on their faces fear, disdain, reverence. Bea doesn't look at them. There will be time for that later. 

When she steps into her cell the sorry state of it almost surprises her. She starts tidying up slowly, mechanically. The toothpaste is unusable; so are the sheets. At the police station they took her photo of Debbie and never gave it back. 

"You're back," says Liz, cocking her hip in the entrance. 

Bea nods but doesn't look up at her. 

"Did you..." Liz hesitates, "did you see Harry?"

The question surprises Bea. "Yeah. I think he's glad that I won't be coming back anytime soon."

 _Figures_ , hangs in the silent air between them for a second; then Liz offers a few words of update on what happened in the prison while Bea was away, and leaves when Bea doesn't offer anything in return.

*

"Come along," hand on shoulder, the tiniest press, that shit always works, "chop chop. Don't disappoint me, princess."

The girl - wide-eyed and terrified, they really do take them in the cradle these days; probably in for drugs - scampers off, her teeth firmly clamped on her bottom lip. She's hooked. Good, because Franky's in a bit of a -

"Doyle."

Franky smirks. "Ah, Mister Jackson. Long time no see."

"The Governor wants to see you."

Franky pretends to glance down at an imaginary watch. "My, time for our rendezvous already? Time really does flies in here."

Franky is ready to find yet another replacement tutor and/or shitty excuse waiting for her, but no, it's Erica. She meets Franky's eyes head-on, her gaze vacant like Franky is a perfect stranger. 

"Franky," she says. 

Shit. Franky's nerves feel like they're on fire now. But fuck her.

She sits, careful to balance her chair the way she knows Erica hates. "Miss Davidson."

"How are your classes going? Did you have time to read the chapters for this week?"

Franky laughs, quick and bitter. She leans over the table. "What, you mean between the time Bea killed Jacs and the time you _kissed_ me?"

Erica flinches. "Franky," she says, probably not half as icily as she intends. She doesn't even pretend all that well.

Franky licks her lips nervously. "What, you're not even going to deny it? Are you done avoiding me, Erica -"

"It's _Miss Davidson_."

"- or are we going to spend another three weeks without talking about it?"

 _Talking about it_. Listen to her. She almost sounds like the respectable adult here. 

"There's nothing to talk about. It was a mistake."

"Was it?" 

When Erica doesn't answer, Franky shakes her head, bitter, and reclines in her chair. She squints, her eyes sad. "What are you afraid of?"

"Franky."

And Franky hates - she _hates_ it - that she can tell just how tired Erica is, in the space of that word, that it's too much, too far, that Erica is asking her not to push it. 

Still, Franky's good at nothing if not disobedience. "How long are you going to lie to yourself about it?"

Erica doesn't answer. 

They don't talk about it for the rest of the session. Franky doesn't raise the subject again, and Erica steadily avoids her eyes, asking one asinine question after another and nodding when Franky answers them perfectly. When the session is finished she stands up, smooths her skirt on her thighs, and Franky can feel in the twist of Erica's mouth that she wants to look up, check if Franky's watching her like she always does, her eyes traveling up Erica's body. But she doesn't. 

"I'll see you next week, Franky," she says instead.

Franky takes a last stab at it, because damn her, she's always been a hopeful sort. "Look at me," she whispers, pleading. 

Vera glances at them from the doorway, her eyebrows furrowed.

Erica looks. Her eyes are still carefully blank. "Goodbye, Franky," she says forcefully. 

Franky shakes her head. She lets herself be led back to her cell, snapping at Kim when she tries to tell her something ("It's the new girl, Franky - just wanted to check for this afternoon"). When she finally falls backwards on her bed, she takes her head in her hands. Fuck this. She doesn't deserve it. 

*

The laundry room is buzzing with noise. It's not hard to guess why. 

The first thing Doreen sees is Simone, folding where she used to when Jacs was still top dog. She's smiling. Besides her, at the steamer, hand rising up and down mechanically, her eyes black and fixed somewhere behind everyone's head, is Bea. _Queen Bea_ , that's what they call her now. 

"Hey, Bea," Doreen says. The whispering stops for an abrupt second where everyone looks at her. God, she should've asked Liz to share this morning. 

Bea looks at her. For a second it seems like she's looking _through_ her, like her daughter's death cleaned all the memories out of her; but eventually she gives a slow, small smile. "Hey, Doreen. Wanna help?"

She hands Doreen a stack of sheets. Doreen's not stupid, and she's been in here long enough to know what that means; she gets to folding. 

They continue on that quid pro quo for a handful of minutes. It's comfortable, in a way - and in another it's fucking scary because Bea _killed_ Jacs and no one thought she was capable of that. The reasoning isn't hard to follow. If she can do that, what will she do next? Yeah. Law of the jungle and all that. 

Not ten minutes later Franky bursts into the room, flanked by Kim and Boomer. Her smile is radiant. Doreen heard about the new girl, Alice. She's in because she was smuggling dope, and had been for a few years too - the perfect target for Franky. Doreen knows the spiel: _I take care of my girls. We're like family, you know. They do what I say, and I look out for them._ She's not as ruthless as Jacs, never was, never will be, but she does alright. 

She laughs when she sees Bea at the steamer. "Red! Heard you were back. Cheers. Yeah, girls?"

Kim and Boomer play along. The tension is palpable; Doreen would be afraid to reach a hand and be electrocuted. 

"Doreen," Franky acknowledges her. There was always something about that grin - takes up half her face, shows teeth. It's fascinating and frightening in same measure, like something she can't check.

Doreen doesn't answer. 

"Hey, Red," Franky takes up again after a few minutes spent in relative silence, "why don't you go back to your old station? I could use a go at the steamer myself." She looks back to her girls. "Every girl needs a bit of heat, if you catch my drift."

It's like watching a car wreck, Doreen thinks with her own painful experiences in the subject. You just can't tear your eyes away. 

"No," Bea says simply. 

Franky is still smiling. She never stops smiling. When Jacs crushed her hand, she smiled until she started screaming. It turns to a smirk. "Aw, Red. I thought we were friends? You haven't been gone so long that you've forgotten the rules, have you?"

Bea looks up at her. It makes Doreen think about the times she used to read the Harry Potter books to Kayia; they'd cowered together at the Thestrals, forever bearing the stink of death.

"You're not the boss anymore," Bea says. "You used me; you made sure I knew Jacs had -"

"Killed your daughter?" Franky puts her hands up in fake, sneering innocence. "Sorry, I thought I was helping you out there. _I_ 'm not the one who -"

"Murdered Jacs? No, you're right. I did."

A chill takes over the room. She's never said it out loud before; maybe in the back of their minds they all thought it was a mistake, a cover-up. Bea, Bea Smith, a killer? Come on.

Franky laughs. She looks around, even though there's not much support to be had anymore. "So what?"

Doreen can see, from her angles, Bea's whitened knuckles and her hands tightly coiled into fists. She takes a step forward, and Franky, because she's Franky, doesn't step back. Eventually Bea cocks her head, her eyes blank. "I don't know Franky, you tell me. You don't want to be the odd one out, do ya?"

*

The change is noticeable: Bea is hardly as cruel as Jacs was, but the dwindling away of Franky's influence on the prisoners is glaring. The women don't cower in front of her like they used to; there are aborted fights with people she drove a little too hard; a few women speak her about her 'sucking up to the Governor', which drives her crazy. Her table at lunch is almost empty, save for a few faithful followers; she has to wait in line for the phone; the ciggies she likes so much are in short supply. 

Funny, how fickle a thing power is: a few words and it's taken away, a bloody knife... But Franky is fit for it, always has been: she might be rash and sometimes unthinking but she's never needlessly cruel. Yes, she likes the mind games; but they're in a _prison_ , for heaven's sake. Stands to reason everyone's been at least a little bit naughty to end up in here, doesn't it?

"Hey, Alice!" she calls in the yard that afternoon. 

Alice trots over, keeping her head carefully down. Franky can see Bea's gaze following her. 

Franky takes Alice's chin between two fingers. "You got what I asked you?"

Alice nods wordlessly. Franky grins at her, pats her on the shoulder, squeezing a bit harder than necessary. "Good. Good girl."

It exchanges hands quickly, without being noticed; there are no screws looking that way, and Franky is after all seasoned in the art of shaking hands with people. She hasn't spent two years in there without learning a few tricks.

From the other side of the yard, Bea's eyes glint. 

*

_What are you doing?_

Erica swivels her chair to look outside. The sun is bouncing off the window, blinding her in the process. It's better than the cameras, though, because Franky is always there, winking and smoldering and doing whatever it is she does, running along fences to catch Erica.

Now that the conversation is over, there are so many things Erica wishes she'd thought to say, better, more cutting things. 

_and the time you_ kissed _me?_ But that's not what happened, is it? Franky was there, as usual, her legs splayed open and trying to find a double meaning in everything, and then she pushed Erica in that fucking corner... Erica squeezes her eyes shut; she can feel a migraine coming on - and then _she_ kissed Erica. That's what happened.

Erica didn't kiss back. She might be ethically against lying, but she can deal with. Whereas the other option, the option where everything she's worked for since she was eighteen, her carefully engineered career track and her average husband with whom she is perfectly amiable, even though he might not be as exciting as... other people, that's not okay. That option just doesn't exist. 

So they didn't kiss. Franky came in, and she broke the rules, as usual, with no regard for anything but herself and her little mind games. Erica didn't report her because it's embarrassing, to be taken advantage of like that, and who knows what rumors it might spark. She's in enough trouble as it is. 

But that's all. Franky is an instrument. Blunt and unpredictable, yes, but she's an instrument all the same: by the end of the year her head will be crammed full of law and she'll look good for the journalists. Erica will keep her down, like a dog; she'll indulge in flirtation because it greases the wheels and because that's how Franky works, and there'll be nothing more. Doomed romances are for TV; real life has this. Compromise. 

Erica's attention is diverted by a knock at her door. Vera sticks her head in. 

"Liz Goldsworth to see you, ma'am."

"Send her in."

Liz looks more agitated than usual when she walks in. She's wringing her hands. Erica wonders if she's drinking again; maybe it wasn't such a good idea to restore her as peer worker after all. 

"Was there something you needed, Liz?"

Liz glances towards the window, as though she was thinking about breaking out. She takes in a breath. 

"Franky's dealing drugs again," she blurts out. 

Erica blinks. "What?" Then she clears her throat, composes herself: "I mean, where did you get that information?"

"I saw it," Liz says stubbornly, her eyes set resolutely forward. 

" _You_ saw it?" Erica asks. It's her job to be perceptive, after all. "Liz, there's something you're not telling me. Is someone threatening you? Did someone ask you to tell me this? If you know anything -"

"Just trust me," Liz says, her jaw set. "She's dealing."

Erica spends another half-hour trying to get answers out of her, but Liz refuses to say anything else. She insists that no one's sent her, which is obviously untrue; and by the end of it Erica's migraine has taken every bit of her patience. She sends Liz back out and asks Vera to grab an Aspirine for her. Vera complies reluctantly. Erica rests her head against the glass of her window, wishing for the day to be over. Maybe if she goes back home now, Mark won't be there and she can take a shower before – 

Struck with a sudden suspicion, Erica goes back to her desk and rummages through the stacks of forms. It doesn't take much time or effort for her to find what she was looking for. But then Franky can't be so stupid, can she? 

Here it is, though, in her hand: the application of one Franky Doyle for a visit the next day. It's the first time in months she's had a face-to-face visit, after her dad.

God. Erica's definitely going to need that Aspirine. 

*

As far as excuses go, it's a good one. Erica _has_ to be looking at the cameras, because othertwise how would she be able to confirm if Franky is, in fact, dealing again? 

Here she is, though, smiling, swaggering to her visitor with her fucking shining eyes, and Erica wishes she'd never met her. She wishes she didn't have those fucking dreams, didn't wake up painfully aroused, her sheets sticking to her skin with sweat. She wishes she didn't feel like every visit to the yard was a fucking torture.

She focuses her attention on the screen. Franky's visitor is a woman, tall and pretty, with curly hair and tight-fitting jeans. She laughs when Franky talks, a charming, feminine laugh that Erica can imagine without hearing it. 

Franky leans in. Erica holds her breath. Franky's thumb skims over the woman's hand, and Erica recognizes the way she looks at her: like she's the only thing in the world, the only thing worthy of notice. She wishes she didn't.

It continues in that vein, and for a while Erica relaxes in her chair, resigned with having to deal with uncomfortable arousal but not with Franky dealing drugs again, thank god.

Of course, that's when Franky takes the woman's face in her hands. She says something, something intimate, no doubt, the woman smiles, and in the next breath Franky leans in and kisses her as though that was something entirely natural, a logical follow-up to the conversation. 

It's nothing like their kiss. There's no violence in it, only fondness, an easiness that makes Erica uncomfortable because it has nothing to do with the proprietary way Mark takes her hand when they're out with friends or his insistence to order for the both of them. She squirms on her chair. Their faces are angled perfectly, she realizes, as though Franky knew she was back here, looking. The thought makes her fingers burn with the urge to slap the laptop closed, but she doesn't; instead she looks on as Franky strokes the woman's face and kisses her deeper, with tongue this time, and – 

Erica's hand tightens on the corner of her desk, and pain explodes in her brain, white-hot. She lets out a loud curse.

"Vera," she calls when she's composed herself. "Call me when it's time for Franky Doyle's strip search."

*

Alice's friend is nice enough, that's one good thing about all this. It's been a while since Franky had to make a visit, and she doesn't particularly relish the occasion, but she's not exactly saying no to kissing a pretty girl either. 

And Juliet – that's her name, apparently – _is_ pretty. She accepts the flirting good-naturedly and even flirts back, her eyelashes fluttering the way Franky thinks she's seen Erica's do once or twice, when she wasn't _thinking_ about it too hard.

When the time comes for the kiss, Juliet goes for it. Her lips are soft and yielding, tasting of sugar, and Franky likes that, she loves that – so why can't she stop thinking that she prefers the way Erica's stomach jumped, tensing, when Franky put her hand there, and then relaxed as soon as Franky's fingers touched on her throat?

She's almost surprised when Juliet opens her mouth. God, she needs to get a grip.

When the screws signal the end of visiting time, she gives Juliet a small smile and a wink. "See ya later, sweetheart," she drawls. 

Juliet smiles back. 

Franky can't say, however, that she expected to see Erica standing with Vera in the room for the strip search. 

She laughs. "Miss me already, Miss Davidson? Or do you want to see me in my underwear, is that it? Because you know, you only had to ask."

Erica crosses her arms on her chest and doesn't answer.

"Strip," Vera orders. 

It's the same as always, if a little bit more harrowing: Erica's eyes are on her the whole time and were Franky not enjoying it as much as Erica undoubtedly does under her mask of stony indifference, she would probably cry to abuse of power. 

"Open your mouth."

Franky complies.

"So can I put my clothes back on now? Not that I don't enjoy a bit of stripping now and then, but it's more fun when both parties do it, wouldn't you say, Miss Davidson?"

Erica's only answer is to take a step forward. "Wider," she says. 

That's a bit worrying.

"Look -"

"Do what I say, Franky."

So Franky does. She puts her tongue down, shows the inside of one cheek, the other, and Erica asks her to lift her tongue, and Franky does it. 

Erica takes out the small pouch of drugs with a gloved hand. She gives it to Vera. "Go get that to my office, and call Channing, tell him to come down immediately. Thank you."

When the room is empty, Erica takes off her gloves. The plastic snaps, once, twice. Franky crosses her arms over her chest. Despite the heat, she shivers violently. 

She shakes her head. God, this is so fucked-up, she never - "Erica..."

Erica holds a hand up. _Don't talk._ She rests her back against the wall, closes her eyes, and sighs.


	3. Chapter 3

Despite appearances, Erica isn't a calm person by nature. She fakes it well enough, that part is true - but she's passionate, she's got fire. In due time, disappointment always gives way to anger. Erica likes anger: it doesn't dwell on things, it explodes and it ruins everything without care for who is in the way. It's what she needs right now, because if she thinks about this she might keel over and cry.

Her voice explodes satisfyingly in the room. "How could you do this to me? You _know_ how hard I worked for you, to make you look good to the officers. I told him, I _promised_ – you could've had parole, and you're going to blow it all for what? Drugs? Come on, Franky. I thought you were smarter than this."

Franky hasn't said a word during the whole tirade. Her arms are crossed on her chest, her eyes blank; the look on her face is painfully familiar, reminds Erica of that first time she'd accused her. Erica doesn't want to remember. 

Franky shakes her head. "You promised? What did you promise?"

"It doesn't matter what I promised. What matters is _this_ ," and Erica slams the pouch on the table. Truth is, she can't believe it. She couldn't believe it when Liz told her, and even now that she's got it in her hand, that she's _seen_ it in Franky's mouth, she can't wrap her head around it. Why would she be so stupid? "Why did you do this, Franky?"

Franky shrugs, but she doesn't answer. Her eyes are shining. In the whole time they've known each other, Erica has seen her cry exactly once: _It wasn't me, I promise you._ It still rings in her head, sometimes, and she remembers the way Franky had looked, leaning forward, her eyes earnest and almost - she remembers her voice, too, she remembers everything, in painful detail. 

Erica pinches the bridge of her nose with two fingers, frustrated. "Why did you do this, Franky? I need to understand. If I understand, I can help you."

Franky doesn't say anything. 

"You know I'll have to suspend your privileges. And you'll be spending a few weeks in the slot."

Franky isn't looking at her anymore, and that hurts more, in a way - because she's guilty, she is. Her shoulders jerk weakly, her only reaction to the announcement. Erica wants to shake her and yell, _say sorry_ , wants to show Franky just how disappointed and angry she is, how betrayed she feels. But this office has seen enough unprofessional behavior for a lifetime.

The rest of the conversation is a blur, Erica's own voice a white buzz in her ears. Franky keeps looking away, never uncoiling, and Erica hates the way that even with all this, all the pain and dejection there is between them, there is still that urge to take her chin between to fingers and say, _Look at me_ , force her to say something, anything.

But this won't change anything. After all, it's what was doomed to happen, only it happened earlier than Erica had intended - but at least now she won't make that mistake. She had been so close to the tipping point. Franky kissing that girl had incensed her; more, maybe, than it had excited her. She would've let her into that office and let her do - but not now. Felon and jailer, that's the way it works. Erica believes everyone has some good in them, or at least she professes to, but maybe everyone else was right - maybe some people just can't be saved.

It's for the best, after all. After this Erica will go home and scrub the tears out of her eyes, hard enough to make the skin red, the same as she has every time she's been plagued with one of those dreams. She'll kiss Mark and apologize for being pissy. She'll even make dinner, and she'll do the work she's been neglecting in favor of poring over Franky's file, to see if there was really no chance of appeal. She'll grovel to Channing, give Franky over to a new tutor. Put her life back on track, like it ought to be. It should never have derailed, and maybe - maybe this is a saving grace. She won't _want_ so hard now, she's almost sure of it.

She would've believed this, maybe - if Franky, before being led away, hadn't fixed her eyes on her for a second, black, deep eyes swollen with tears, and said, "I'm sorry."

\- and all that careful construction - that house of cards, the righteous indignation built over the simple white-hot anger, the chiding, the boundaries, the promise of a future back on the straight and narrow - falls apart, just like that. Just because Franky Doyle says sorry.

*

The news that Franky's been sent to the slot for dealing spread fast. Everything spreads fast around a prison: stolen goods, diseases, the stench of death.

Bea isn't surprised when Liz asks her. In fact, she has her answer ready. 

"Why did you do it?"

They were been eating, Liz subdued, staring into her plate and not eating much. Doreen has been looking better these days, even though Liz and her still aren't back to their former friendship; she sees Kayia on the weekends and she likes Bea. She's fine as long as there's no violence. She loved Franky - everyone loves Franky -, but she was afraid of her.

"Franky was no danger to you, not anymore. She wouldn't have -"

That's untrue, but Bea ignores it. "It's not about that." She looks up from her food. Since Debbie's death she feels a hundred years older. "You remember my little girl? Debbie?"

Surprise - and regret - flash across Liz's face. "Of course I remember."

Bea shakes her head. "I can't let that happen to more people, Liz. My little girl died because of that shit."

There's that thing about grief: after a while you don't stop hurting, because you never stop hurting - but you stop _feeling_. It's strange, like your organs are all shutting down one by one. You don't care about what color the sky is or if you're going to die in a riot. You could be pummeled to death and you still wouldn't care. There's only one thing that keeps you alive - a center, a nasty flame, the one thing that still burns, that coughs up black smoke in your veins and keeps your heart pumping. That's what this is to Bea.

"Toni nearly killed her kid. Doreen," Doreen twitches; she's clearly been listening to the conversation the whole time, "crashed her freaking _car_ and killed hers. I'm not gonna let that happen again."

"Franky isn't -"

"Franky doesn't give a shit. She wants power, and she doesn't care how she gets it. I care. You're my family now."

She regards them, crowded around the table - a fine family they make. But she doesn't even have resentment anymore, only that little flame, that noxious smoke. Her girl, her princess, sticking a needle in her arm and being left to fucking die as she choked on her own spit. That's not gonna happen again, not on Bea's watch. 

She looks at Liz calmly. "That's why," she says. "That's why I did it."

*

"The living ain't as easy now that your sugar momma ain't here, is it?" someone spits at them. 

Kim doesn't flinch; Boomer growls, ready to charge.

Kim lays a placating hand on her forearm. "Calm down. Too many."

Boomer gives her an apologetic glance and squares her shoulders. They don't take too much abuse once they get to their unit, so that's good. Better keep a low profile for now. 

For all they're jackasses, though, those women are right - Kim and Boomer aren't much without Franky. Boomer can fend for herself, she's got her stature in her favor, but Kim doesn't. She knows martial arts, sure, but it won't help her much in here. Brute force is the only currency. Last time Franky was sent to the slot she got by purely on virtue of being unassuming - Kim's gotten great at that - and because Liz and Doreen looked out for her. That won't happen now. They won't pick a fight, sure, but if Kim ends up in a bad situation they'll just look the other way. Not that Kim can blame them, really. 

"You want tea?" she asks Boomer. 

Boomer shakes her head. "Nah," she says with a smile. 

Kim starts on the tea and lends a distracted ear to Boomer's humming of 'Hot Potato', smiling when she sees, from the corner of her eyes, Boomer wriggle her hips to the beat. Times like that, Kim doesn't entirely regret that she's here. 

Thing is, before coming in here Kim wasn't the best at making friends. Still, she was nineteen when she was brought in, and she was whip smart, understood quickly that prison was all about getting by. She's a pretty agreeable girl - not like Boomer, who sometimes has trouble checking her temper -, and she's pretty. No wonder Franky noticed her so fast. 

Kim remembers it as though it was yesterday, actually. Everyone probably feels the same way that first time they're brought in, with their laundry and no way to go, walking as close as possible to the gray walls. Kim wasn't too afraid, she'd seen worse, but she was cautious, jumpy. 

And then - and then Franky jumped in her path, grinning like a madwoman, with her hands on her hips and her tattoos and her swagger.

"New girl!" she'd yelled from over her shoulder. Kim had heard the tramping of footsteps. 

Franky had smiled down at her, dazzling. "So what do we call you, new girl?"

"Kim."

"What are you in for, then, Kim? Any interesting stories to share?"

Kim had shrugged. 

Kim knows how lucky she's been, considering: Franky is kind, she's hot and she can be ruthless, sure, but she takes care of her own. Her first weeks in here Kim got all kinds of bruises, nasty cuts from being roughed up just for the sake of it in a corridor, but as soon as Franky took her in all that stopped.

The kettle whines; Kim startles. She laughs helplessly at herself, then pours herself a mug. A quick glance in front of her tells her no one's coming from the corridor. Good. Thank god Bea's not like Jacs, otherwise Kim and Boomer's throats would already be slit. 

Kim sits at the table, next to Boomer who's leafing through one of Franky's magazines. She mostly gets law stuff these days, but there's still a fair amount of porn and the occasional gossip rag, when she can get it. Those are pretty old, though - no need to explain why. 

"Hey, Booms," Boomer looks up, frowning lightly, "you ever told me why you're in here?"

Boomer gives a one-shouldered shrug. "Thought everyone knew. Knocked two coppers' heads together when I was pissed. One of them's skull cracked. I'm not good with all that anger management stuff," she mumbles. 

Kim smiles, nods. "Yeah. Thanks."

"Sure, whatever."

There's not much more to be said of the subject, so they don't. Franky's not a big fan of talking, either. Kim doesn't mind. She likes the sex. Franky might look selfish but she isn't; she's a good lover, considerate, and she fucks Kim like Kim asks, sometimes so hard it makes her see stars. 

So Kim told her. She wasn't really expecting to, but she was curled in a heap over Franky's stomach that one time, sighing with contentment. She brushed her sweaty bangs - she still had bangs then; shit, she really was young - off her forehead and she said, "I killed my father."

Franky's stomach jumped. "What?"

Kim hoisted herself on her elbows. Franky's eyes were dark, hot. "You asked me what I'd done to get in here."

There was a silence, Franky digesting the information, then she asked. "What'd he do to you?"

Still now, when she thinks back to it, Kim feels herself drained of all her color, because she remembers. You don't forget things like that: things like your father telling you it's okay, it's normal, it's natural, and putting your seven-year-old hands on his cock. "Come on," he'd said. "Stroke. Good girl." And you don't forget, either, you mother's guilty glances at the dinner table when your mouth was too red. You simmer in the secret and you rot, like Kim rot, like everyone would rot... 

"The usual, you know. Raped me."

Franky didn't ask, but Kim told the whole story anyway. Stories like that eat you from the inside if you don't tell them - but then who do you tell them to? It's a pattern: years and years of not telling and Franky Doyle shows a bit of kindness, gives her a few orgasms and it's enough for her to spew her whole miserable life story. Textbook.

Kim's not even a good story-teller. "Like, from six to eighteen, then I moved out but he would still - you know, on weekends and such. And then my mum got invited on that cruise, she was crazy over it. I waited til she was gone, I went over there. He was working on the car. I remember, he told me -" _Kim, darling, what a good surprise_ "so I took the nail gun and I killed him."

That's not the whole story: before that there'd been sitting on his chest with the gun and forcing him to talk. Blood and the whole mayhem. Torture, that's what they called it at the trial, _first-degree murder, grievous assault and physical harm, torture_.

"They made my mother come back. She called me a dishonor to the family. She said she never wanted to speak to me again." _... the blood of your father on your hands, you disgusting girl, you're not my child..._

She didn't need to say the rest - they didn't believe me, no one believed me; her mother saying she was always an evil child, had something against her father from the first; her lawyer's plea of insanity rejected, and then this. This place is a kindness, in comparison. Everything in Kim that isn't already dead is grateful for Franky. It's not love, it's something else, stronger - faith. 

Because Franky looked back down at her and said, with the concern of someone who loves too hard and could never understand, "If I could kill him I would."

"What about you, then?"

Boomer's voice jolts Kim out of her thoughts. She blinks. "Um?"

Boomer waggles her fingers impatiently. "What 'bout you? Why are you here?"

Kim shrugs. "Nothing. Doesn't matter."

Boomer doesn't insist. That's how things work around here. Kim sips at her tea, peeking at the porn once in a while; she keeps an eye on the door, in case anyone gets the idea to come search for trouble. 

*

Even for someone without Franky's restless energy, the slot would be unbearable. Is unbearable - she knows, she's heard, seen and, well, experienced. The first few days aren't too hard: things to think about, the occasional meal, push-ups. Keeping busy, that's the trick. Marks made on the wall with your fingernails to keep track, or little indents in your skin if you can't scratch hard enough. Then the one-week mark; that's when it starts being really hard.

Of course, for Franky, it also means that she's got ample time to rehash the conversation with Erica in her mind. Not that it was much of a conversation, really: Erica did all the talking. What was there to say, anyway? Sorry, I can't survive in here if I'm not on top? I was desperate? Please, tell me you love me? Franky might be desperate, but she's not _that_ desperate. Besides, she knows better than to give all her power over. You do that, and then you've got nothing - especially in here. Erica's fickle. What does it take, a rock on her finger - no, better not think about that. 

Except she can't, can she? She can't _not_ think about it, because she's locked in a cell with no light and nothing to do but torture herself, go over her mistakes and tell herself what a gigantic screw-up she is. You can't keep being angry for too long when no one answers back. So Franky closes her eyes and she imagines: what does he look like? Does he have dark hair, or is he blond? Is he a lawyer, like her? How many carats is that fucking ring? Did he even kneel, when he gave it to her? Or did he cuddle her extra close after their round of vanilla lovemaking and whisper in the crook of her neck that he loved her more than anything? The thought makes Franky want to barf.

Push-ups. One. What does he call her? Erica? Love? Honey? Ten. Does he kiss her like Franky can tell she likes to be kissed, hard and bruising, until she can't breathe? Twenty. How did they meet? Was it - was it at a garden party, or in college, or did he see her in a meeting and ask her out to dinner? Did he drive her home? Was he a fucking gentleman? Thirty. Maybe she doesn't deserve her - but Franky can't think that. It's not about deserving - it's about wanting, and Erica wants it, and Franky wants it, so why - Forty. She shouldn't have taken those stupid drugs. She shouldn't have kissed that girl. You do what you've got to do, though, Erica's got to understand that, at least a little. Bea isn't good for the women in the long run, Franky could pledge her life on that. Fifty. There are so many things to tell, that she can't, won't say: Look at me. Love me. Give in. 

Give in. 

Franky collapses on her stomach, covered in sweat. Her head hurts, and so do her wrists. She wonders if Erica can see her - if there's a camera, if it can pierce through the darkness.

*

It doesn't get too hard. 

Rape's not a big thing anymore. It's horrible to say, and probably not very politically correct, but the lines blur after a while. Kim will bargain. She'll let them do what they want, she'll close her eyes and do like when she was a kid, imagine that she's floating above the ground, that her body doesn't exist and is completely unfeeling. She'll keep her head down in the corridors and let them say she's theirs if that's what it takes. Janine told her that the first week, actually - gave her some smack, some sort of welcome gift, probably forced by Franky, in hindsight, and said - "It's no good being pretty like that in a place like this, sweetheart."

But it's fine. She gets by, and the weeks pass, one, two, three. Franky probably has it harder in the slot. Kim's lucky enough to never have been there, but she's heard enough horrifying stories to never, ever want to try. But Franky's a survivor, always has been. She'll be alright. When she comes back she'll look tired and pale for a few days, she'll have nightmares for about a month, and then it'll subside and she'll be back to her riotous self. She'll get herself in trouble, as she always does, laughing while she does it. 

Meanwhile Kim spends her days with Boomer and a few other followers of Franky's. She borrows one of the easiest of Franky's books but gets bored soon enough - she's never been all that good at reading, or in school for that matter. She sits in front of the TV and watches the idiotic serials with the girls, trying to forget the pain in her cunt. There's work, laundry, the occasional scuffle.

It's alright. Kim's fine. She gets out in what - seven years now? She forgets sometimes. She'll be okay. 

"Hey!" she calls, holding a piece of old pilfered candy between two fingers. "Booms!"

Boomer looks over, frowning - she's missing the two knobheads having knobhead sex, what a tragedy - but she beams when she sees the candy and opens her mouth wide. 

Kim laughs. "Catch." She throws it; the candy makes a neat arch in the air and falls right on Boomer's tongue.

*

Franky honestly couldn't tell what time it is. She tried, she did, but at some point she just lost the sense of time. Well - she guesses it's unavoidable. It's dark, but then it's always dark, varying shades, sure, but - Evening, maybe? Who knows. What she _does_ know is that it's the end of the third week. It shouldn't be too long now - another week or so and she'll be back up there. She feels like this is taking the marrow out of her bones.

She doesn't expect, though, not in a million years, for the door to open and for Erica to slip inside. Franky looks up, her eyes carefully blank. Erica doesn't let anything transpire either.

"Miss Davidson," Franky says. "You sure took your time. Wasn't sure you were going to pay a visit."

"I wasn't either," Erica says.

There's a beat of silence. If Erica had a purpose in coming here, she doesn't show it.

"What did you promise?"

Erica blinks. 

"You said you promised something. What was it?"

The wrinkles on Erica's forehead get deeper. "Nothing, it's not important."

Franky wraps her arms around her knees. Maybe this is all they're ever gonna get - one kiss in Erica's office that she'll deny to her grave and fights in the slot. Prison romance, right? "Then tell me."

Erica clucks her tongue frustratedly. "I told Channing you'd have completed one semester by the end of the year. I was wrong, obviously."

Franky frowns. "Why did you do that?" And when Erica doesn't answer - "You needed to, is that it? After the -" she waggles her fingers "murder, you needed something to bargain with." Her jaw sets. "Me. You used me."

Erica blinks away the concern like it's an annoying fly. "I didn't _use_ you, Franky. I promised something I thought you could achieve, and you're the one who disappointed me."

Now Franky is seething. It's almost a good feeling, knowing that there's still anger in her after all this time spent down here. "Sorry I wasn't in on the plan. I'm just your ticket for the comissioner's office, right? I'm just here to make you look good?"

Erica crosses her arms over her chest. "Right now you're not making me look anything."

Franky shakes her head. "I can't believe you did that to me." 

But she should've - because that's how it always happens, isn't it? 

"Why is that?" Erica says, her lip curling. It's almost a snarl. "Because I'm your friend? I'm not your friend, Franky."

This time Franky springs up. She takes a step forward, like she was going to do something, shake some sense into Erica or maybe push her against the wall and kiss her. She doesn't, though. She turns around, almost turning her back at Erica. But her eyes are still here, bright and accusing. "Damn right you're not. You're not my _friend_. When are you going to admit it?"

Erica looks tired, like she already knows how the conversation is going to end. "Franky..."

Franky shakes her head, giving a little helpless laugh. "You think you can just say my name every time I say something that makes you uncomfortable, call a screw, and it'll go away? It won't. It won't, Erica. Look at me."

For once Erica complies. Her eyes are clear; there might be tears in them, but it doesn't matter. The camera blinks red above them. Erica won't uncross her arms. "I'm sorry – I'm sorry about the drugs, okay? I should never have done that. It was – it doesn't matter. But just admit it. Say that there's something... here. Between us."

This time it's Erica's turn to laugh, and Franky wishes she'd never heard it. It's bitter and disenchanted, almost cruel. "And then what? We just run away together, is that your plan? You're a prisoner, Franky, and I'm the Governor, not to mention engaged to be married. Even if there was something, it can't happen. Ever."

Franky rests her back against the wall again. She lets herself sink down, her head in her hands. "Just say it," she says weakly, fervently. "For me. I won't -"

Erica rubs at her temple. "Franky... no."

Franky deflates. She rests her palms on her knees and they look at each other, from across the room. Erica wipes her eyes and gets out of the room. There's nothing more to say.


	4. Chapter 4

Did she dream before Debbie's death? In her prison bunk, in the darkness, did she dream? She remembers the first night, tossing and turning, wide awake and still reeling, but after that it all coats in a blur, the days a string of restless happenings and the nights empty stretches of almost-quiet. 

It doesn't matter, anyway. She doesn't dream now, she barely even sleeps. When she catches a look at herself in the cracked mirror in the showers a hollow-eyed, gaunt-faced version of herself stares back at her. Even the red seems to have faded out of her hair, even though she gets someone to color it every once in a while. You don't need to be a genius to understand that red commands respect, grants attention, power. 

The women respect her. They don't respect pain, but they've all heard that Franky's back in the slot and they know it's her, even though they don't know how she did it. Rumors travel; Bea lets them. She sits in the yard and she oversees all the transactions, cigarettes, magazines, beauty products, everything that goes through the kitchen suppliers and the corrupt guards. She doesn't talk. She doesn't have anything to talk about. Liz and Doreen stand with her, trying to be comforting. It's a good thing that they're friends again. Liz told Bea, once, that she needed that friendship to survive the day in here. It doesn't seem like an exaggeration, especially for someone who's seen her some mornings with her mouth half-open and her eyes hazy and unfocused, her walk a sad stumble.

Harry comes to visit Bea a few times after Debbie's death. Why, Bea doesn't know: she watches him from her end of the table and wonders how she could ever have loved him, not in the desperate, sorrowful way she used to but harsh-edged and pitiless. She doesn't find any fondness in her for the quiet, mousy woman who put a dinner on his table every night. She was clueless and weak. 

Jacs's voice is the only constant in her life. It follows her everywhere, in her bunk, the showers, at lunch. It's hard to get used to at first, but one of the lessons of this place is that you really can get used to everything. Figures, really, that Jacs is someone you can't kill. 

_I almost pitied her, and then I realized: what's she got to look forward, a life like her mother's..._ Of course she was right. If she wasn't Bea wouldn't have stuck a pen in her fucking neck.

With this mantra in her head, Bea sticks to her new rules: no drugs. It doesn't matter how many inmates beg her, writhe on their beds or get written up. The Governor can go to hell, for all Bea cares. She doesn't want a lot of things - actually, she doesn't want anything anymore, but that. She's just not going to let it happen again where she can see. 

"Bea."

Bea looks up from the magazine she wasn't reading. "Mr Jackson."

The expression on his face looks strangely familiar now: downturned mouth, bitter empty eyes. Grief. "We need to go."

Bea stares back blankly. 

Jackson sighs. "Your trial. You didn't forget, did you?"

Bea ducks her head. Right. Her trial. Jackson throws a plastic bag full of her clothes on the table. "Get dressed, we're leaving in ten minutes."

Bea picks the bag up. Her fingers feel numb; she walks slowly, wondering idly what the judge will look like. Her faith was never more than a hard-to-shake childhood habit, and she stopped believing completely after Harry started beating her every night to relieve the tension, but she hopes a row of stern-faced, tight-lipped judges is exactly what's waiting in front of the flames when Jacs gets to the gates of Hell.

*

_Just say it. For me._

The thing is, Erica doesn't actually remember what Mark said when he asked her to marry him. Not just the regular spiel, but the rest, all he said about how perfect she is and how well they go together in his fantasy. It wasn't that long ago. But this - these words, Erica feels like they were seared into her brain from the moment Franky said them, right there with the memory of her face, open and vulnerable and everything Franky never is with anyone but her. She replays the conversation in her head at night with Mark lying beside her, her guilt a nauseous heartbeat, and she tries to convince herself she said the right things. 

She doesn't sleep all that well, either. To Mark she says her job is stressing her out, and to herself she doesn't even try to lie anymore. She still dreams about Franky, but they're bittersweet, dreams where Franky bites her and tears her apart, limb by limb, breaks her heart or just leaves, turning her back on Erica in one of the cold black corridors of the prison.

The alarm glows neon on the bedtable. Three. Two. It rings louder than Erica expected, but she doesn't startle. Her limbs feel heavy. Bea's trial is today. Channing knows about the drugs, about Franky. He won't let her off the hook that easily now. Shit. 

She rolls over in the bed. At least -- at least Jacs is dead. Erica thinks back to being named Governor, all her plans for bettering the education of the inmates, healthcare... She would make the prison safer and get articles written about her, and on Wednesdays she had her sessions with Franky, that little dot of color in her day she carefully didn't think about too hard. She was following the path she'd designed since she'd finished college, her boyfriend would marry her if she said she wanted to, she had a good job, was guaranteed to climb the echelons. Sure, Meg Jackson was dead, but things like that happen in the prison system. Besides, Erica would make it a better place, something Meg hadn't been able to do, obviously. 

She thought she had it so good, so easy; and look at her now. 

Mark's arm coils around her shoulders, and Erica holds back the snappy urge to push him away. He nestles his face in her shoulder and makes a sleepy sound, muffled against her skin. 

"I have to go to work."

"Already?"

Erica disentangles herself from his loose embrace and sits on the edge of her bed. She dresses soberly, a black pencil skirt and those pumps that can still make her believe that she's at the top of the world. But even that brings back memories of Franky, the way her eyes eat her up, her - no. It's not Erica's fault, anyway. Is it? She didn't do anything. She's the victim here. It doesn't feel that way. 

She doesn't have the energy to make breakfast for herself - she's never been the cook out of her and Mark, anyway, never could dedicate to it the attention it requires -, so she just drinks a glass of orange juice, ties her hair in a tight bun, the strands tugging at her skin. The keys make a metallic noise when she picks them up on the table. 

She turns around to pick up her umbrella on the kitchen chair - apparently it's going to rain again today - and Mark is leaning against the doorjamb, his arms crossed and his hair mussed. Erica used to find it endearing, but now it just irritates her, yet another indicative of his softness, his incapability to take anything in charge, including his own life. She's being unfair, but she doesn't care. 

"Kiss goodbye?" he says, the corner of his mouth quirking in a smile. 

She forces a smile back. "Sure."

She drops her briefcase on the table and steps forward to kiss him. His arms bracket her shoulders, again; she feels locked up. His mouth tastes of morning breath. 

Erica pulls away, pecking him quickly on the lips. "Good day," she says. 

She feels cold when she closes the door, alien to herself.

*

They all watch as Bea walks down the hall. It's almost a ritual now. 

"Where's she going?"

"It's her trial. For killing Jacs."

"You heard she's not letting smack into the prison anymore? Someone's gotta do something about that."

"Yeah? What are you gonna do? Stand up to Simone and get yourself a screwdriver in the cunt?"

"Bitch."

"She ain't a bitch. She got Tamara her menopause meds, you know."

"Yeah, well -"

"She lost her baby girl, for God's sake."

"Shit happens."

Bea doesn't listen to the conversations. She keeps her eyes forward, but she's not looking at the door either. The lifers all get that look, after a few years, when they realize they're not getting out alive. 

*

The door clicks when it opens. Franky looks up, but she doesn't get on her feet. You don't want to hope too fast, when you're down there.

"You again," she says, her mouth bitter. "What do you want?"

The guard behind Erica makes a threatening gesture forward. Erica pushes him back, says something to him, low, probably asks him to go take a walk. Franky wants to say it, _do you feel guilty about something, you never let them listen,_ but she doesn't have the energy to. Besides, it's useless. 

There's silence. Doesn't she have anything to say?

"You're getting out," Erica says. She sounds relieved about it, even though she has no right to. "Come on."

Franky doesn't move, devoid of energy. She worked out while she was in here, she always does, but it doesn't change anything. The solitude is what drains you. The thoughts you keep laundering in your brain, mistake by mistake, one after the other. "What's going on?"

Erica startles. It's almost imperceptible but it's been months since Franky's been tuned into her, cognizant of every twitch that goes through her, lighting up her nerves. It's unnerving. "What do you mean?"

"What's going on?" Franky repeats stubbornly. "Jacs was down here for months after you busted her for drugs, so you must have some reason to let me out of here. Who do I need to suck up to? I'm sure it'll be more effective if I know."

Erica takes a step back, stung. Her face hardens. "I don't have to listen to this."

Franky shrugs. But Erica doesn't move, doesn't leave, doesn't tell Franky to hurry up. She just stands there, and it infuriates Franky more than it should.

"You never did tell me his name," she says, fake-casual. 

Erica looks at her blankly. Her hair used to be more curly, forgiving - now she just looks tired. Franky wants to wreck her and fix her at the same time. "What are you talking about?"

"Your fiancé," Franky throws. "You didn't tell me."

Erica bristles. "It's none of your business."

Franky gives a short bark of laughter, still not looking away. "Isn't it? Tell me."

"I'm not going to tell you, Franky."

"Why? It's not like I'm there, is it? When he fucks you. When he puts his cock in you and you close your eyes and you think about _me_ , you see _me_ -"

Erica grits her teeth. She looks around like she's searching for a place to hide, but she doesn't leave. "Stop."

Franky leans forward, feral. She wishes she _could_ stop but this is what she's always been, a fucking trainwreck. "Is he a good lay, then? I bet he isn't. Why did you say yes in the first place, anyway? Did you use to love him or were you just afraid, all this time?"

Erica's mouth is tight. "Shut up."

Franky doesn't know exactly what possesses her to spring up, forward, crashing into Erica. Maybe it's all the sleepless nights she spent in here, driving herself crazy. Maybe it's her shitty childhood. Maybe it's the fact that every look Erica gives her makes her want to do exactly that, push her into a wall and wreck her until she's too ruined to be afraid, cautious or whatever the fuck she calls it. 

Franky's arms bracket Erica against the wall. She resists more than she had in her office - that wasn't even resistance, that was just pretending, tedious foreplay -, going at it with her nails, but the guard isn't here, there are no cameras in the slot and Franky is strong. Her fingers are coiled tight around Erica's forearms; selfishly, she hopes it'll leave marks, finger-shaped bruises Erica will have trouble explaining to her faceless, worthless fiancé. When Franky closes a hand around her jaw Erica looks furious and fierce, her pupils dilated.

"Let go of -" 

Franky presses tighter, so Erica can't speak. Something in her clinches, fall apart. But Erica will never stop fighting this, will she? It's just not who she is. 

Franky presses her cheek against Erica's hair, breathing her in. She couldn't say where one ends and the other begins. Somewhere, she regrets ever getting into this. It was fun at first, when it was just a game, teasing the pretty, pure teacher and make her flustered during their sessions, but now Franky is neck-deep in this, and it's getting abundantly clear that she's not getting out. She's just so angry. 

"You need to stop, Erica," she says in a hoarse whisper. "You might believe your own bullshit but you're the only one. I don't care about the drugs, I don't even care about your fucking schemes -" she could go on about the things she no longer cares about, about just how reckless this, Erica's body thrumming under her, makes her, "just stop lying to everyone. Stop lying to yourself. Stop lying to _me_."

Her hands falls away. Erica's eyes flash. She shakes her head. "You have no right -"

So Franky kisses her. Their teeth clash and there might be a little blood, and it's violent, short, unpleasant. Erica wrenches herself away as soon as she can, as though Franky hadn't heard her heart hammering under her fingers. What a fucking hypocrite.

"You are _never_ ," she points a trembling finger to Franky, glowering, "doing this again. Do not touch me."

Franky shakes her head, trying to hold in a scream of frustration.

Erica turns around. Franky can hear her breathing, and for a few minutes this is all there is between them. Breathing. 

"You can go back to your unit now," Erica says eventually, her back to Franky, her voice cold. 

*

Franky isn't used to bowing her head when she walks. 

Add to that that she has little to no instinct of self-preservation and a contrary tendency to impertinence, it's a good thing that Boomer and Kim immediately flank her as she engages in the corridor to the unit. 

Boomer noogies her, laughing her loud, crowing laugh. "Welcome back, boss," she says. 

Kim threads her arms around Franky's waist and hangs at her side, and it's stupid but Franky feels instantly better, less raw, less broken.

"What happened while I was on holiday, then, girls?" Franky asks, and immediately regrets it when Boomer and Kim exchange vaguely afraid looks. "You know what, whatever. We'll take care of that later."

She does keep an eye out for Bea, but she's nowhere to be seen, not even sitting in the yard like the freaking matriarch she was pretending to be when Franky was carted off to the slot. Franky isn't stupid: it's pretty obvious that someone ratted her out to Erica, and though it's doubtful Bea's the one who did it, she probably 'asked' someone to do it for her. It's not like Franky didn't do pretty much the same thing to Jacs a while ago, so she knows how it works. Still, that all feels like it was forever ago. Before everything went to shit. Well – _more_ to shit, anyway. 

Kim tells her that Bea's out for her trial after they're done fucking. Franky hopes she gets sent to another facility, but it's pretty unlikely, as far as wishes go. They're already maximum security here, they've got their fair share of grievous assault and first degree murders, and everyone knows you keep the psychos together. Franky asks Kim if she knows who talked to the Gov to get her out of the slot – she obviously didn't get the idea all on her lonesome, given how predisposed she is towards Franky and that her job is hanging on the line – but Kim doesn't know. They've been frozen out by the others, apparently. It sucks, but it's not entirely surprising.

The only problem, of course, being that Franky's never been good at keeping her head down, literally or figuratively. She was supposed to that at every turn, with her mother, then with that asshole, and look how that ended. Besides, Franky's not going to go ahead and say it, but she genuinely doesn't think Bea will do good for the women. She knows the type: lost, so deep in grief she can't think, much less feel. It'll just go on and on until it reaches the breaking point. Jacs was a raging bitch, but at least she knew what she was doing. Bea has no fucking clue. 

"So she's got, like, a crusade against drugs?" she asks Boomer after she reports what's been happening in the prison during the last week. 

"Yeah," Boomer says, chewing on her gum. "You know, cause of -"

"I know why, Booms. It's not exactly rocket science."

Boomer shrugs, far from offended.

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Franky mumbles, nervously thumbing the tattoo on her arm. It's not actually all that stupid, except maybe for the way she's going about it - she's going to get everyone in trouble. "I'll bet you anything she's never seen anyone go cold turkey in prison." 

But it's not like Franky can do anything. It's liberating, in a way - in every way that isn't terrifying - to not have to worry. So what if her family doesn't want her anymore. She can take care of herself. She's been doing it for long enough. Besides, Boomer and Kim are still here. True friends and all that.

"You're with me, Booms?" she asks before she can check herself, chewing on her bottom lip. 

That makes Boomer look over at her. The TV is humming in the background. Boomer smiles; her teeth are a little yellow. "'Course I am," she says with a shrug, as if there really was no question about it. "I'm your best friend, you slut."

Franky makes fun of her for that, and Boomer noggies her for her trouble, this time with markedly more success. Still, Franky keeps the words, hidden deep in that box of memories that is the only thing she treasures and her only real secret.

*

Franky is working out in the gym when it happens. In retrospect, it was fairly easy to predict - but she didn't. Oh, it's plenty ironic, it is. 

She's pedaling frantically - the gym is the only place where she can really be alone with her thoughts without looking like she's being all introspective, which is always a sign of weakness -, her face and chest dotted with sweat, when the door swings open. 

Simone walks into the room, followed by five other women. Franky doesn't stop pedaling, but her heart rate speeds up. Shit. 

Eventually she stops pedaling and rests her elbow on her knee, smirking at Simone. She licks her lips. "Hey there," she says. "Something you want?" She opens her arms. "'Cos I'm afraid your mama and I aren't exactly friends."

Simone laughs. Franky never could really figure her out, except that she's a nasty bitch; sometimes it seems like she's a borderline decent person, and then she does something shitty like this and - yeah, no. 

"Bea isn't really pro-violence," Simone says, mocking, "but me and the girls think you deserve a little correction."

"C'mon, what is this, a porno? What are you gonna do next, whip out the nurse uniform and the nipple clamps?"

No way she can get to the door unscathed. When Franky left Booms she was in the yard, so she won't be able to get here in time even if she gets wind of what's happening; and if she does, there are probably people outside. Simone learns from her mistakes. No, looks like Franky isn't getting out of this one.

One of Simone's lapdogs, Mary, sniggers. "I'm sure you'd like that, rugmuncher."

Franky rolls her eyes. "Can we skip the unoriginal insults and get down to business?"

Simone's eyes flash, unabashedly cruel. Maybe those rumors about her drowning her kids aren't all lies, then. "No objection there. Girls?"

The kick to the stomach takes Franky a bit by surprise, actually. She didn't expect Simone to actually take part on the action - she's the type to want to take over the boss, or at least that's what Franky thought, but it won't be the only thing she was wrong about today. She oofs, falling heavily off the bike. Mary greets her with a punch to the face. Franky rises - if she's going to be beaten up she'll at least give as good as she gets; she has a reputation to uphold, after all - and doles her out one in the jaw. Mary totters backwards, her eyes bulging. 

After that Franky kinda loses track. Someone gets her in the knee, she feels her lip split open when knuckles collide with it, and there's thick, sticky blood at her temple. The arch of her eyebrow pulses, stinging; her leg bustles, Simone laughs, at least it's not the screwdriver, this could definitely be worse... It's hard to keep that in mind, though, and eventually there's nothing to do for Franky but to surrender, wrap her arms around herself and let them go at it as she tries to tune the pain out, muffle her screams in the flesh of her arm when a bone breaks noisily, the noise greeted by loud laughter. 

Franky only understands it's over after a while, when Dr Patel rolls her over, his face worried. Franky gives him a weak smile, more blood flowing over the one that's already crusted on her busted lip. 

"Gonna faint now, doc, if you don't mind," she says, and she does. 

*

Some day, Vera bursting into her office wearing that deep frown and saying, "It's about Franky Doyle," won't do anything to Erica, but that day clearly isn't today. She has to rein herself in when she hears the news, though. It's not like she can exactly rush down to the infirmary to nurse Franky's wounds. So she paces in her office for about ten minutes before giving in, citing "I have to find out who did this" (even though she's more or less certain Franky won't tell her) as her reason. Vera eyes her critically, but doesn't say anything. She keeps doing that; it's unnerving. Erica almost wishes she would just come out with it. 

It only occurs to her as she runs through the corridors that she and Franky didn't exactly leave on good terms the last time they talked. It doesn't matter, though - or at least it didn't when Vera said 'beaten up' and Erica's heart raced, started beating so loud and so hard Erica wanted to close her arms on her chest to make sure no one could hear. It's no use thinking about it now, anyway: Erica knows better than everyone she won't be able to focus as long as she hasn't seen Franky. She could say she's concerned with the welfare of her prisoners, but Franky's right - Erica does sometimes get tired of pretending.

She has to go through the room attending the infirmary to get in. She leaves Vera at the door, sending her away to check on the prisoners, maybe try to find out who did this before they clear out all the evidence, though there's not much hope there. And then she gets inside the room, she glances over at the glass and she sees Franky. 

Doctor Patel is bent over her, and half her face is obscured, but it doesn't mutter. Her face is covered with band-aids and gauze, but even with all that on the blood is hard to miss. One of her eyes is only half-open, swollen and sickly blue, and Erica could bet the white is struck with shot veins. She has a cast on one of her arms. Erica looks and looks, this woman, _Franky_ , lying there, beaten into submission, and it tugs at her heart the way nothing ever does, not love or rage or Mark or her nephews or kittens. Nothing. 

It's so terrifying, is the thing, because what occurs to Erica suddenly, is the absolute certainly that if she goes in there she's not going to be able to fake it. She'll look at Franky and Franky will see right through her, like she always does. It's probably selfish to think like that, and Erica knows she should just go in and check if Franky's okay, but she can't. She just - she didn't ask for this, and she doesn't want to surrender because it's madness, it's so much pain just waiting for her to take that final step. Erica's never been the self-destructive type, except in the dreams she doesn't talk about, and this will rip her apart, she can just tell. 

It would be fine if it were just lust. That she could control, she could harness. She's good at that. She's got a whole gallery of examples of what letting the animal take over can do to you before her every day. But Franky is also the slow teasing smiles; the books she devours and tells Erica about, leaning back and balancing in her chair; that blind devotion and jealous rage Erica only glimpsed at; the way Erica just _knows_ they could hold hands one minute and hurl things at each other the next. 

This is a bad idea, and it's already gone too far. Erica can still taste it on her lips, the press of Franky's mouth on her this morning. It was savage and imperfect, Erica resisted like she never resisted anyone, and yet - look at her. She's still begging for it, to make the wrong decision, already panting for the hard friction of Franky's thighs between her own. 

(And the things she wants to hear - _trust me_. She would give in so easily.)

Vera opens the door, looking concerned. "I'm sorry, Ma'am, I couldn't - Is everything alright?"

Erica turns around quickly. Her eyes feel damp. Shit. She ducks her head. "Yes, everything is fine. Tell me."

Vera frowns. "Didn't you want to..." she nods at the door. 

Erica slips out the door quickly, closing it behind her. Her chest eases up almost instantaneously, even though the image Franky's battered face is still flashing in her brain. "Yes," she says, trying to sound decisive. "I'm sure. I'll go later, when Franky's had time to rest."

Vera accepts the explanation and starts talking, the perfect sound to drone out Erica's thoughts. 

*

"How does the jury find Mrs Beatrice Smith?"

The woman stands up. She looks stern and a little like the cashier Bea used to buy her groceries from. Funny, how her fate rests on what that woman is going to say. Except - no. Her fate ended with Debbie. 

The woman stares straight ahead. Tough job; it's so easy to condemn someone you don't know. "The jury finds Mrs Smith guilty as charged."

Guilty. It sounds nice, doesn't it?


	5. Chapter 5

Erica only slept with one girl before Franky. 

No, wait. Erica only kissed one girl before Franky, in college, a cute redhead with glasses, a friend. It was an afternoon in spring; they were smoking pot. They kissed and then they had sex and it was nice, and Erica thought it was something she could tick off her checklist, filed under the list of things she'd done and enjoyed a regular amount but decided it was better not to do again. 

She was wrong. This – this has nothing to do with Tanya Baroley. There are no boxes to tick for this and Erica can't give in, won't give in, because if she does she knows it's a hole she won't crawl back out of. 

She's still sitting at the kitchen table when Mark gets in. He does a double-take when he sees her, surprised. She's taken to burying herself in her work those last few weeks, has been coming home later and later, which would be a problem if Mark didn't believe all her lies so readily, almost like he's hungry for them. He smiles. He never had any poker face; when they met they played cards a few times and Erica robbed him of all his money. This, too, she gave up. Cards don't become women like her. 

"Hey, honey," he says, leaning down to peck her on the lips.

He must see something on her face, because he pulls back, frowning slightly. "Is there something wrong?"

Erica screws her eyes tightly shut for a second. "We need to talk."

Mark laughs nervously. "Well, that's ominous." Something occurs to him suddenly, and his face gets thunderous. "Don't tell me this is about that night, I thought -"

"It's not." She pauses. "Not exactly."

Mark drifts to the other side of the kitchen, picks up two glasses and a bottle of red, which he pours. He gives one of the glasses to Erica – she doesn't want wine but she drinks half of it in one gulp, fake courage. "I don't think we should get married," she says. She's always been a big believer of that tearing the band-aid thing. 

Surprise registers on Mark's face, as though this came completely out of nowhere. Erica wants to hate him for it, but it just makes her sad. Sadder. 

He rakes a hand through his hair, confused. "Why? Did you change your mind again, is that -"

"No." But she did, didn't she? Change her mind. "I just don't think I'm there." She takes another sip, wishing it were vodka instead, the trashy sort, so the rough burn could distract her, if only a little. "I'm not sure I'll ever be."

A small shiver goes through Mark. She's known him for years, so she knows that, too, the way he's going to pretend it's not a big deal, furrow his brows and get logical. "Well, I'm – I mean, that's – but we can work something out, it's fine if you don't want to get married, I -"

"Mark." She'll spell it out if she has to; she just doesn't want to.

Something shows on his face when he hears that word, his name, stripped of all the affection she used to put in it; it hardens and gets almost vindictive – self-preservation, she knows. Still, he's not hard or brave enough to ask ("Say it"); instead he just stands there with his hands balled into fists, looking anywhere but at her. 

"I think we should break up."

She hates herself for how she says it, like it doesn't hurt her at all; it feels cold and insensitive, and she knows, from the way his face just _falls_ , that he thinks the whole time she was somewhere else and he's just the butt of the joke, the cuckhold. Maybe he has. He clears his throat. "Is this because of - is there -"

She ducks her head, absurdly tired. "I'll take care of any deposit for the wedding preparations, so you don't have to worry about that. Of course you're welcome to stay here until you find somewhere else to live, and I do think we should talk to your parents together, though I can -"

"Erica, stop."

Don't look up, she tells herself, but she does, of course she does - and here is Mark, the man to whom she said yes when he asked if she'd marry him, the man she took to her parents and she'll never be able to take a woman to her parents, what is she doing, but this has nothing to do with Franky, deep down, it has to do with her and suffocation, the way she can't breathe, and yes, she'll take the guilt over the way he looks devastated, like the wind has been knocked out of him and he's holding onto the counter with white knuckles. 

He sets his wineglass down. His hands are trembling, she sees before he puts them away. "You should think about this," he says, his voice so far from steady it's almost pathetic. 

"I've already thought about this."

He knows that: once she makes a decision she sticks to it, except of course when it comes to love and its various disasters. She saw this house five years ago and didn't even blink when she said she wanted it, signed all the papers on her own and never once had a second thought about it. They argued about her job but once she took it she never regretted it. He knows - she's thought about this. 

Still, he covers his eyes with his hand, looking as bone-tired as she feels. He might be crying. When he recollects himself, he sighs. "We'll talk about this tomorrow morning."

She wishes she had the strength to say it - _I won't change my mind_ \- but she's so, so exhausted. Maybe this can wait until tomorrow morning, maybe he's right, maybe the sun will make it less bleak and less definitive. Erica has always hated that phrase, but maybe - maybe they can be friends. Or something. 

"I'll take the couch," Mark says. 

Erica nods; her throat feels so constricted she isn't sure she could say another word, and even if she could - what would she say? 

*

He only ever comes to see her when the others are showering or in the laundry room. She doesn't say anything about it, and he doesn't either: she clears the room and he slides through the corridors, looking like he always looks since the riot, like he somehow manages to be there and a thousand miles away at the same. She has to ask him about that trick, how he does it. The smell of the prison is enough to make her want to retch. 

He collapses on a chair, refuses the tea she offers. His keys jangle on his hip. She would be worried for his professional integrity, but she doesn't really care and besides, there are so many blackmails and schemes between the guards - she's sure he manages. 

"How did you cope?" Her voice is starchy and the words are silly, inconsequential.

He laughs, hollow. They're not friends. "I didn't, at first. I was just... going out every night and getting hammered. Fucking everything with a heartbeat." She blinks. "You can't really drown it, though. You always end up surfacing again. Can't really forget."

Bea can't forget, either: his wife's body on the ground, her blood on Bea's hands; and then the corpse of her own daughter, that she hasn't even seen. The night after she was denied the attendance of Debbie's funeral, she dreamed about digging the body out, broken nails crammed with brown sludge, and holding Debbie against her heart one last time. 

"I can't go on like this," she says plainly, looking at her hands. 

He doesn't look at her. "Yeah," he whispers, like he's thought that too, once or maybe a hundred times, and - look at him now. 

For a moment they sit in silence, staring into nothing, their expressions slack and slightly bemused. It's probably funny, in a sad, pathetic way.

Eventually he swallows. His hand is closed on the keys, she notices when she glances over at him, metal pressing dents into the pulp of his fingers. She doesn't ask. Sometimes she does that, too, press hard lines in her skin with forks to remind herself that she's alive, that not all of her died with her daughter, that there are still things here to be taken care of. 

"You're doing well," he tells her, toneless. 

"Am I?"

"The women listen to you. You could do good in here."

He looks at her, his eyes blank: he knows. She's a good woman - at least she used to be - but she won't do good here, just like he doesn't, and this is just the way it is, because prison gets into your bones and hurts you, marks you. She feels a pang of satisfaction when he looks away before her, guiltily.

Before he leaves he asks her when she's getting out. She looks up at him, and she sees juxtaposed on his face the expression he wore the day he brought her to the courthouse: closed-off an the slightest bit hopeful, just like now, with a hint of the anger she remembers from the time he thought she'd killed Meg. He doesn't hide it very well, that gaping wound inside. 

She shrugs. _She_ does: she hides it well - or she will, starting now. "I'm not getting out."

He nods. She doesn't watch him walking away. 

*

"So you really don't know?"

Karin, the prison's resident God nut - she acts as a priest for the ten or so religious women in the prison - and self-designated Switzerland, shrugs in apology. "Sorry, man. You know how they are. Forget you as fast as they found you, right?"

Franky nods. She punches Karin's shoulder more or less playfully, making sure to throw in her smile some of its usual dangerous edge. If there's one thing she learned in here, it's that the more scared people are of you, the less they go ratting on you afterwards. Pretty easy, as far as rules go. Still, Karin's been here since the beginning and she's not all that impressed by Franky anymore. Franky trusts her to be saying the truth when she says she has no idea who has enough power and chops to go talk to Erica for her. The more time passes, the more convinced she gets that it wasn't Erica herself: the girl's stubborn like a bull, and it's not like she hesitated to keep Franky in the slot for five weeks last time. Besides, she doesn't do things half-heartedly, it just... isn't her. 

Franky pushes to the back of her mind the fact that she knows Erica well enough to know all that, and what the hell, she never meant to go that deep - and thanks Karin. 

"No problem." Karin brushes her bleached hair out of her forehead. "You should come to mass sometimes."

Franky gives an easy smile. "Sure," she says, only slightly mocking, which means, _no way in hell_. Franky has had it with people telling her what's best for her, anyway. She can manage herself without any god looking over her shoulder. 

Karin shakes her head. She seems like she's about to insist but she doesn't, distracted by something behind Franky. Franky looks over, mildly irritated as she always is when someone doesn't give her their full attention. 

"Looks like there's a new arrival," she croons as soon as she sees her, delighted. 

The new girl looks about fifteen but is probably twenty-ish, dark-skinned with frizzy hair and a pouty mouth. She's chewing gum, her hands thrust deep in the pockets of her tracksuit. She really must be fresh, if she's still in casuals. Her gaze zeroes in on Franky for a second, sizing her up. Franky licks her lips for the effect, and the girl looks away boredly. Fornutaly - or maybe unfortunately for her -, Franky doesn't give up that easily. She swaggers to the girl, thrusts out a hand. 

"Hey, _chica_. I'm Franky," she says with a winning smile. 

The girl regards her with a bored, insolent gaze. "That's great," she drawls. "Now get the fuck out of my way."

Franky holds her hands up in mock peace. "Wow, no need to get feisty there, pussycat."

The girl bares her teeth. "What are you, one of those prison dykes? I ain't gonna be your bitch."

Franky laughs. "Ouch. I might cry myself to sleep tonight." She leans into the girl's private space. This is always so much fun, honestly. "Look, sweetheart, if you don't like the management here, you come and see me, yeah? I'll be your mama." She leans back, flicks the girl's nose with a finger. The girl growls. "I'll treat you right."

She saunters off before the girl can insult her to her face, though it doesn't keep a trail of Spanish expletives from following her. Franky pops one of the candies she kept from the time she could still manage to get things in into her mouth and chews, grin well in place. 

She squeezes Karin's shoulder as she walks back to the yard, laughing. "Looks like you've got a new sheep for your flock, Kar."

Karin mutters something about blasphemy and lost children, but Franky tunes it out. Today's gonna be a good day, she can just feel it.

*

The women improvise a pick-up game of basketball in the yard. Liz cheers along with everyone, even though she hasn't played since she's been removed from the peer worker position. She's still assuming the responsibilities of it in anything but name - Doreen is a great girl, but she's just a kid, and she doesn't know the women half as well as Liz does - but all the same, she doesn't feel comfortable enough with her popularity rate to risk getting her skull crushed. Those games are usually a way to beat up people as discreetly as possible; it's still prison, after all. 

She's surprised when Doreen pulls her sweater off over her head and ties it around her waist. "You're gonna play?"

Doreen shrugs. "Eh. Why not, right?"

"I guess," Liz nods. "It's just... you haven't played since the little bean, that's all."

Doreen's face tightens temporarily, but her face lightens much quicker than Liz was expecting. Something is definitely up. 

"Gotta keep busy," Doreen says as she trots away. 

Liz watches her play for a while. She's energetic, her ponytail swinging in the air as she crouches on the ground and asks for passes, her feet restless, almost never touching the ground. Liz finds herself smiling when Boomer yells at her to pass and Kim ends up scoring, even though Doreen recoils a little guiltily when she sees Franky, Boomer and Kim do their victory dance. Old habits are hard to shake, Liz knows that better than anyone.

Doreen's face is shiny with sweat when she trots back to Liz. Liz hands her the water, smiling a little. "Why so cheerful?" (They don't use the word 'happy' too liberally in here. Better not tempt the devil.)

Doreen ducks her head. For a second it looks like she's hesitating, like she's not going to tell (which is stupid, Doreen is a shitty liar anyway). "Kayia is visiting next week," she says eventually, trying not to smile too widely and failing. "Toni called, and her grandmother said she'd let her, and that she could even come back once a month, if -"

"Doreen!" Liz gathers her in a hug. It's not exactly a thing they do, but it feels right. She lets go quickly, digging her fingers into Doreen's shoulders. "That's great."

Doreen sighs, wistful, and returns the hug. "It is. I couldn't believe it." She still doesn't, apparently; when she pulls away Liz's T-shirt is a little damp at the shoulder. Liz waves away Doreen's apology, still smiling. 

They chatter for a bit about how Doreen's going to welcome Kayia - there's probably going to be some Hot Potato dancing in the visitors' room, the guards are going to be ecstatic about that - before falling into a content, contemplative silence. Liz is about to leave to her duties (she's got to organize the study sessions for the newly arrived, and apparently there's a new inmate who's been giving grief to the guards) when Doreen calls her back, her brow furrowed. "I mean to ask you," she says, distractedly picking a blade of grass, "is there something going on?"

Liz frowns. "What are you talking about?"

"No, it's just - I saw you go in the Governor's office the other day. I was wondering."

Liz chuckles, relieved. You never know in this place. "Nah, that was just peer worker business. She wanted to 'take the temperature of the women', or something stupid like that. You know how she is." 

Doreen nods. "Sure. Sorry."

"All good."

With that, Liz walks away. She smiles all the way to the fence, for no good reason, even waving to Franky as she passes her, sweating and cursing as she dribbles the ball under the hoop. It's a good day, as good as days get in a place like Wentworth; Liz can feel it in her bones.

*

Franky is in her cell, re-reading her way through _Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit_ when the new girl barges in - and really, what is it with people thinking her reading is a sign that she needs a conversation partner? She has work to do, for God's sake. Sure, at first she was only working to make Erica happy - and flustered -, but now she'd actually like to get that fucking degree. 

"What do you want?" she says without looking up. 

The girl doesn't answer. She hovers, which is incredibly distracting - and irritating. Franky keeps reading.

"They did a number on you," the girl says eventually, pointing jerkily to Franky's face. 

Franky shrugs, flashes the girl a quick, blinding grin. "You should see the other guy," she drawls before going back to her book. 

"I'm in," the girl says after a spell of sullen silence.

"Yeah? For what?"

The girl frowns. "You know what." But when she glances at Franky she doesn't look so sure. "You said -"

"Sorry, darling. If I remembered everything I said to people..." Franky juts out her lower lip, falsely contrite. "I didn't promise you anything, did I?"

The girl growls. "You said you'd take care of me."

Franky starts reading again, disinterested. "Eh. Not satisfied with the current administration?"

The girl rests her back against the doorframe. She's trying to look nonchalant, but Franky doesn't buy it for a second. For one, she's tense as a wire, and secondly, the way she hasn't stopped snarling since she's started talking doesn't exactly give off the peace and love vibe. She probably asked around about Franky. "I don't like that Bea woman," she says eventually, gnawing on her bottom lip.

"Yeah? Why is that?"

The girl camps herself on her feet again. "I just don't. Look, you're gonna help me or what?"

Franky cocks an eyebrow, rests her book open on her chest. "I wouldn't get too cocky there, love. You know help doesn't come free in here, right?"

"I'll do whatever you want."

Franky barks a quick laugh. "Yeah, better not dish that one out too much either. So what's your name, then?"

The girl looks around, like she's afraid of something hearing them. Franky likes her already, with her wild hair and tough chick act. Also, she has a really nice rack. "Mariana," she says eventually, biting it off. 

Franky sits up, patting the end of her bed. "Well, welcome, Mariana." She rolls the 'r' like you're supposed to, and the girl's eyes grow wide, like she's terrified. Nice. 

She sits down anyway, and Franky shifts to be closer to her. She takes her hand, pressing her thumb hard on the vein on the inside of her wrist. Mariana cowers slightly. Christ. If everyone was that easy, it wouldn't be so fucking hard being top dog in here. 

She leans in, smiling like a shark. "We're gonna do great things together, Mariana. Just you wait and see."

*

It's awkward. It's painfully, horribly awkward. Of course they play it off because, well, it's who they are - but Erica can't help from looking at Franky's face, marred with bruises and cuts, and Franky has her head bent on her work almost stubbornly for most of the session, like she thinks she's given too much already. Erica can't really blame her. 

She clears her throat, her bones leaden. "Have you done the reading?"

Franky pushes her chair away from the table with her feet. She's fidgeting, her fingers tapping a steady rhythm on her thigh. Nervous. She nods. "Yeah." 

"Good." Erica grabs one of the books from the pile and opens it at the page they'd been working on. "So we're at -"

"What -" Franky starts, her voice hoarse and emotional, a tone that makes Erica look up almost on reflex. 

"What is it?"

Franky hesitates. She looks away for a second, her jaw working, then she bites down on her bottom lip. "Fuck," she says. She rights herself on the chair, she looks angry now, vindictive. It's easier to watch, more familiar. She jerks her chin at Erica's hand. "What's going on?" she drawls. "Trouble in paradise?"

Erica resists the urge to hide her hand under the table. Of course Franky would notice it, she's stupid not to have thought of it. Unless she wanted - no, she'd have liked a moment to breathe, she would. This morning she had to wake up to Mark sitting at breakfast, soft and hopeful, and tell him that she was leaving him. She had to bring up papers and living arrangements again, pretend she was cold and feelingless, tell him no even when he begged and when she left the house she felt drained, exhausted beyond everything she'd ever felt before, except maybe that first time she'd said yes to marrying him, in her room afterwards with her head in her hands.

She tilts her head, tired. "It's none of your business, Franky."

Franky gives a bitter chuckle. "You know it is." She leans forward. "Erica. I'm not going to hurt you."

Erica smiles; for a second she thinks about telling the truth: _of course you're going to hurt me. People like you always hurt me._

But instead she shakes her head and for once, God bless, Franky doesn't insist. The session goes well, a little stilted but they're good at ignoring the things that simmer between them, so it's okay. Erica pretends not to see Franky's gaze on her ringless finger and Franky pretends not to want to talk about it. It's fine. It's okay.

(Erica is becoming pretty good at those self-deceiving mantras, convincing herself that seeing Franky back in the library with her face bruised and cut doesn't do anything to her, that she doesn't remember Franky pressing her against the wall of the slot and trying to make her admit - what? She knows; that her leaving the apartment this morning had nothing to do with her, nothing at all. Yeah - she's good at it.)

"Good work," she says before leaving, and Franky looks up at her, gives her one of her old smiles, almost naïve, blinding and satisfied. Erica blinks, disoriented. She rocks back on her heels. "I'm -" she says, only remembering belatedly that she doesn't have to justify herself to Franky. 

She's walking out of the room through the shelves when a hand touches her hip. Erica startles. She knows who's going to be looking at her when she turns around - she's not stupid, thank you very much - and yet she's entirely unprepared for Franky's wide, unbearably honest eyes bearing into hers, unapologetic and almost savage. 

"Yes?" she says, trying to keep her voice steady. "Was there something else?"

The truth is, she doesn't feel so stable now that there isn't a table separating them and a few absent gazes roving over them every few seconds - she feels bare, exposed and turned-on, all of which she despises. Franky doesn't say anything. Erica feels like she might crawl out of her skin or break in hives, or - do something. Something has to happen. There is a law in the universe, or at least in the universe made up of the two of them, that seems right now to be shrinking on itself, pushing all the air out - there is a law that stillness cannot last. Something has to explode. That's who they are to each other. Dynamite. 

"Erica," Franky says, focused and hoarse. Erica hates her, a prickle of feeling that erupts hot in the pit of her stomach, almost a physical reaction; it makes her want to curl her fingers at the nape of Franky's neck and pull her in, be it only to quiet that annoying static noise in her head.

So she does it. Later she'll claim the contrary, of course, say Franky was the perpetrator as always, the one to break the rules first, but she's not. Erica is the one who tips forward, and Franky meets her halfway, her mouth open and greedy like Erica always imagined it'd be, only better, stronger and headier. She feels like every touch of Franky's tongue against hers is setting the air in her lungs on fire, and when she pulls away she'll be charred inside, indelibly marked. 

"Wait -" she says, more out of a deep-rooted feeling of obligation than because she really means it; Franky's fingers dig deeper into the skin of her hips and Erica sinks into the bookcase behind her. A book falls at her feet and she startles – a tangled web of thoughts rushes into her mind, cameras-guards-inmates, and really anyone could walk in one them, but instead of deterring her it only makes her press closer, closer until she's plastered her hips against Franky's and there's no mistaking her intent, what she wants. But Franky knew all along, anyway, didn't she?

A low moan slips from Erica's throat when Franky's mouth slides on her throat, her fingers still tangled in Erica's hair. The sound startles both of them; Franky's eyes are shining when she pulls away. Erica opens her mouth to say something, though what, she isn't really sure, but the sight of Franky crams the words back into her throat. 

Franky smiles. "Ssh," she whispers, licking her lips like she wants to find the taste of Erica on her lips. Erica leans forward before really meaning to. 

If she wanted to think about it – she doesn't – she'd have questions about that look in Franky's eyes, the set of her mouth, at the same time mischevious, fierce and slightly desperate. But it seems like she's forsaken reason at the moment, so all she does is cant her hips up, butting her head up in the nook of Franky's shoulder. 

_Stop_ , she says in her head, and maybe even out loud, but there's blood rushing in her ears and even if she hears Franky doesn't stop, and instead sneaks a hand under Erica's skirt. 

See, this is all Erica never wanted. She knows herself, after all – and she always in those traps, with people who set her on fire and those kind of doomed romances just never end well. Sure, she's not a fan of the bridal fantasy and she doesn't give a fuck about wedding cakes, but this? This, Franky brushing her fingers against her soaked underwear and chuckling, low and dark against the thin skin of Erica's throat like she doesn't know what she does to her, like she hasn't known the whole time? This only ever means trouble. 

"Come on," Erica keens, and Franky doesn't tease, just strokes, confident and obviously experienced. There's nothing to do, so Erica just rides it out, keeps her head down, panting in Franky's shoulder. Franky's almost carrying her now, a hand secured around her waist and keeping them both pressed against the bookcase.

Erica wonders how she feels about it. She tries to reach out, slip a hand in Franky's pants, but Franky jerks her into place, effectively immobilizing her. Erica is past feeling guilty for how much that turns her on.

(It's just that this morning she put her ring back in Mark's hand and kissed him and felt nothing, felt like her head was leather and ice and metal and everything he accused her of. It's just that – it's scary, isn't it, it's exhilirating but it's also fucking terrifying to have Franky Doyle fuck you against a bookshelf and feel like you're burning from the inside, thick and oily flames like a fucking ocean fire, soul and heart and cunt and everything in between. 

It's just that – but it doesn't matter.)

Erica gives directions in a choked-off, breathy voice, because she might get fucked but she's not just gonna stand there and take it, not unless Franky makes her, and that can't really happen here and now, can it? Franky just smirks about it, does what she's told one time of out five and shuts Erica up with deep, bruising kisses. It's fast and dirty and Erica's got her skirt hitched up to her hips and she feels obscene, but – 

"Governor?"

Erica's heart feels like it's going to leap out of her chest. Franky jerks back, and Erica has to physically stop herself from moaning at the loss of her fingers, sinking her teeth into her lower lip.

"Governor?" the voice – Vera? Maybe, Erica could probably tell if she was capable of hearing anything besides her own heartbeat – repeats, closer. Erica rights herself, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of her skirt. Shit. Shit, fucking – what was she thinking? 

By the time she looks up from the complete disaster that is her outfit, Franky's disappearing around the corner of a bookshelf. Self-preservation first is always the motto around here, but Erica is ready to be mad at her for it, for running – and of course that's when she looks up, and Erica has to rest her back against the bookshelf again because she never can read those looks, the dilated pupils and that twist of her lips, revenge or love or whatever it is she keeps inside.

Footsteps. Erica rakes her hands through her hair, preparing excuses. "Governor?"

"I'm here," Erica calls. Her voice is hoarser than she'd wished, but it'll have to do. 

Thankfully, though, it's not Vera but Caroline, the new recruit. Channing sent her after the whole Jacs debacle, assumed they'd needed help keeping the prisoners in check. He's probably not wrong. But then, if he knew – better not go down that road. 

"Sorry," Caroline says, looking more innocent than a prison guard should. Well, at least it serves Erica's interests. "Um, there is a phonecall for you? We assumed you would be finished with Doyle."

Erica gets the absurd urge to laugh, say something stupid like, _I wish I was_. She gives Caroline a wry grin. "Of course. I had some business to discuss with her. Lead the way."

She gives a quick glance at the floor before following Caroline back out the room. The book that fell over is open on the ground, spine broken. _War and Peace_ , it reads. Erica laughs to herself, hollow. She can already feel the migraine brewing in her brain. 

*

It's only when she reaches her unit that Franky lets herself breathe properly. It comes in short, greedy gulps, filling her lungs up little by little. JD, one of the women she used to meddle with during her first year, stops when she passes her by.

"You look proper fucked, my friend," she barks, her laugh rough. "What gives? You found someone new to lick your pussy?"

Franky gives a fake-casual shrug. "Eh. I wish."

"Don't we all?" She leans against the wall opposite Franky, pulling out a cigarette. At least Bea's mania about drugs doesn't extend to that. Good to know. "Though the new boss is keeping busy."

"Red?"

JD slants her an oblique glance. It's eerie; a scar runs diagonally on her face, put there by a sailor who'd tried to rape her almost twenty years ago. "You don't know? Right, you were in the slot. Well, your girl Red, rumor is the guard with the dead wife -"

"Jackson."

"Yeah, rumor is he's been slipping it to her. Handy, if you ask me. But he's had his eye on her since the beginning. Anyway, they're real friendly now, so apparently he helps her bring stuff in. You'd have thought he was impossible to turn, right?" She laughs. "Guess there's nothing pussy can't get you. No wonder they lock us up."

Franky bites on her bottom lip, so hard she almost draws blood. God. She leaves for five minutes and the whole place goes batshit. "Fuck."

JD starts. "Something wrong?"

"No," Franky snaps. 

JD seems to notice that she's given up something more than gossip; her face lights up with predatory greed. "Hey, sunshine, information's not cheap, y'know -"

Franky rolls her shoulders, laughs. "Think about that _before_ you tell me next time, Jay. Gotta go."

She meant to go to Kim and Boomer first, actually, get a bit of advice and maybe even get something like a plan. Prisoners sleeping with guards is in no way a new thing, but Franky's got to admit she didn't think either of them were the type, and now – well, now she's in trouble, and it seems like Red is a more worthy opponent than expected. Still, she's no Jacs. 

She doesn't have the time to get to her friends, though. Halfway there she runs into Doreen, literally: they smack into each other hard, and Franky recoils, rubbing her shoulder. "Shit, watch where -" Which is when she sees Doreen. "Doreen."

Doreen looks away, obviously uncomfortable. "Franky." She looks around, but they're alone in the corridor. "What do you want?"

Franky moves into her space, feline. Doreen hangs back on her heels. "I don't know, nothing, love. How have you been?"

"Fine."

"Don't be like that, come on." The hand on her arm makes Doreen jump, and Franky feels a pang of pity for her. Was she like that before? She used to know she was safe when she was with Franky. They can say what they want, but Franky did what she had to do to protect her family. Red was just a casualty of war. She'd have thought – she'd have thought they understood how that shit worked. "I hear Red's been a naughty girl," she says eventually, because beating around the bush isn't going to help. 

The accusation focuses Doreen; her eyes swivel to Franky's face, scan her face to find a trace of bluff. She's bad at it, though. No discretion, and besides she's always been shit at lying. "Don't know what you're talking about."

Franky gives a bark of sharp, teeth-baring laughter. That's the secret: she can play the game, and she can play it _better_. There's a reason she alaways wins. "No? So you're telling me Red hasn't been getting Jackson's dick wet?" Doreen flinches. "C'mon, Doreen, you're the breeder here. You even got a fucking kid out of it, so I assume you know what that shit's like. Unless you forgot about that, too?" Yeah, she could pull her punches. But she spent fucking _weeks_ in the slot, and someone's got pay for it. Franky's not a nice girl, maybe it's time people remembered that. 

Doreen lunges forward, livid. "Don't you fucking -"

Franky blocks her with her arms, the heels of her hands pushing against the sockets of Doreen's shoulder. The momentum propels Doreen against the wall, and after that the movements are easy, a whole childhood of petty truancy and necessary intimidation. Doreen suffocates quietly, Franky's forearm jammed against her windpipe. A few women cross the corridor, but Franky's glare is enough to dissuade them from intervening. First love dies hard and all that shit.

"Who went to see the Gov? I got out way early. What happened?" she hisses, her breath hot in Doreen's ear. 

"I don't know," Doreen croaks out.

"You sure about that? What do you think your new pals would say to Red cosying up to the authority, huh? You think they'd be happy? And what if the Gov were to learn who you've been hanging out with, murderers and all that nice crowd – think she'd let you see Kayia again?"

Rage bursts on Doreen's features; she struggles out violently, and Franky staggers back. Before she can catch her breath Doreen's up in her face, swinging her fist, and she's never been good at accuracy but that maternal instinct is a real bitch. She clocks Franky neat in the jaw. Franky doubles over, hunched back and spluttering blood. Shit. Maybe she ought to stop with the extracurrical, before she can't walk at all. 

Doreen waggles an indignant finger. "You don't talk about Kayia, you bitch," she spits. "You don't a fucking word about her, you hear me?" she goes to grab at Franky's hair, but Franky ducks her hand and plasters herself against the wall, breathing hard. "And if you say a fucking word about it to the Gov-- if you talk about Jackson, maybe Simone'll rethink her little screwdriver stunt, and this time there won't be anyone there to stop her."

She strides away, her footsteps resounding in the empty corridor. Franky waits until she can't hear anything before letting herself slide to a crouch. She spits a mouthful of blood angrily. "Shit."

When Kim finds her a few minutes later her knuckles are bloody from beating on the wall from lack of a better target, her face set and determined. Kim gapes. "What happened to you?" she says, rushing to touch franky's bloodied face. Blood is trickling between her teeth; Franky pulls Kim close and kisses her, hard and certain like she never could kiss Erica, like she'll never let her. 

When she pulls away her eyes are full of fire, her lips wet with spit and blood. Adrenalin rushes hard and hot in her veins. "Come on, babe. We've gotta make a phone call."

At least they'll remember this: no one meddles with Franky Doyle and gets away with it.


	6. Chapter 6

People scream. 

They scream from joy, pain, sadness; sometimes there are tears to supply, sometimes it's just screams, raw screams that make their palate bleed. When you've been in Wentworth for long enough you learn to discern what each kind of screams means, if you should run or not. Meg Jackson didn't scream - there was no time.

Mariana shakes her head irritatedly, still stuck in the enclosure of Franky's door where she seems to have taken permanent residence. "What's this? Is someone murdering a pig or something?"

Franky doesn't look away from the _Commonwealth Criminal Code_. "You should get used to it."

"Doesn't it sound like that woman... that woman you -"

Franky's eyes snap up, dark. "Don't you have something else to do, for once? Someone's else ass to lick?"

"I'm not the ass-licker around here," Mariana sneers, her lip curled. Franky almost smiles. Looks like she took lessons for Jacs's ghost.

Franky shrugs, looks back down at her book as Mariana stomps away, swaying her hips exaggeratedly. She'll be back soon enough, and in the meantime, some well-deserved silence. 

*

Franky would be lying if she said she didn't expect _some_ reaction. She knows what she did, and she's never shy, mostly because you can't be shy in a place like Wentworth. You have to fess up to what you've done sooner or later, and Franky isn't stupid. It didn't take long for her to figure out embracing the pan full of oil and the third degree burns would earn her respect here, would help get her up the ladder. And it's what she's always trying to do, isn't it? Climbing the ladder. Getting respect, if she can't get love.

She's not thinking about that, of course – she has other things to think about, and Erica can stew in her juices (ha) a little longer – but she was right when she told Erica she belonged with them. It's even more obvious on her. Franky didn't miss the way she shone on the TV that first evening, when they announced that she was the new Governor. If Franky didn't know better she would almost have said she was the one who stuck that shiv in Meg Jackson's throat. 

Anyway. She's ready when Doreen bursts into her room. This time she's only pretending to be reading, too keyed-up to actually take in any of the legal lingo. Doreen makes a beeline for her, jolts her off the bed and backs her against the wall. She looks more furious than Franky's ever seen her, her face contorted and red, Franky remarks with a sick sort of pride. 

"You cunt," Doreen hisses. "You undo it now, I swear I'll kill you. What did you do? What did you do?" 

Her hand goes to close around Franky's throat but Franky, expecting it, slides out of her grasp. She smirks – she can't help it. She's not proud; this isn't something she wanted to do. But when she does something she goes all the way, it's just the way she is.

She plays innocent. "What do you mean? What did I do?"

To her credit, Doreen doesn't buy it for one second. "What I'm curious to know," she spits, "is how did you do it? You're nothing here anymore. You're scum." She throws her arms around, her body coiled tightly with rage. "Do you still have something on Toni, is that it? That fucking junkie, I'm going to destroy her. I knew she'd do something..."

She's pacing around Franky's cell now, almost as though she'd forgotten how badly she wanted to kill Franky just a minute ago. Franky starts leaning against the wall – it's not like the conversation is over, she definitely didn't do this for nothing – but just as she relaxes, Doreen wheels around to face her, anger flooding back to her cheeks. Her fists curl at her side. Shit. Franky prepares to duck. 

She's usually quite good at that shit, but the difference between regular Doreen and angry Doreen is like a Hulk transformation. Doreen's fist hits Franky square in the jaw, and Franky can't do anything but curse at the shocking pain and thank whatever God that for sure doesn't waste any time thinking about her that she didn't have anything sharp in her drawers before she headed over there because fuck, from the looks of things Franky would be almost unrecognizable by now.

Hunched over, she breathes in a few times, trying to regulate the pain. When she looks up Doreen is rubbing her fist with her other hand, looking slightly stunned. 

"You done? You got it out of your system?"

Doreen's eyes are filling with tears, rage or sadness, Franky can't tell. "I thought you didn't want to be Jacs," she says, a hard edge to her voice. "This is exactly something she would do."

Franky feels a pang of guilt, but ignores it. "No, it's not. If it was Jacs, Kayia would be lying in a ditch somewhere, or suffocating in her own vomit like Red's daughter," Doreen's shoulders tremble, slightly enough that Franky probably wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't been friends for so long, "not safe with her grandmother. Now the question is, do you want to see her again?"

Doreen's head snaps up, and for a second Franky is afraid she's going to be punched in the face again. It's not like it's going to fix Doreen's problems. Sure, Franky would probably feel the same in her place, but honestly she could use a while without ending up in an infirmary bed, especially if Erica isn't going to use the time to visit her. Erica. Fuck. Didn't she say she wouldn't get off-track? She needs to get this done. For all she knows Mariana is stirring shit who-knows-where, that girl is like a puppy. 

"Well?"

Boomer chooses this moment to stick her head in the door. She's not the brightest crayon in the box, but she immediately senses the tension. She squares her shoulder – though she doesn't need that to be intimidating, but – 

"What's going on?"

Franky glances at her. She probably looks a little ruffled up, actually. Doreen – well. Boomer probably heard. Apparently she made quite a fuss in the visitors room. She hesitates, but Doreen isn't the kind of person who responds well to this kind of set-up. She's emotional.

"Nothing, Booms. We're fine."

After a second, Boomer shakes her head. She leaves.

Doreen nods at Franky, grinding her teeth. "Give her back to me. She has to visit again."

Franky savours it for a moment, the power. God, she misses it. "You know how it works, Dor. If you're with me, you're family. I protect you. But you're not with me anymore, are you? Now you're Red's lapdog."

Doreen slumps against the wall, her face in her hands. "I'll do anything."

Franky hardens her voice. "Let me tell _you_ something. I don't like turnjackets. So you do what you want, you kiss Red's ass a little more if that's your thing now, but I'm not some kid you can jerk around. One phone call and the next time you see Kayia will be at her high school graduation." Her eyes turn dark. "I'll say what I want to say, to who I want to say it to, and the next time you touch a hair on me or one of my crew, I will kill you." Doreen has stopped crying and is looking up at Franky, the hatred in her face so strong it makes Franky want to pet her cheek. Blood races in her veins, hot. "So next time you threaten me, think about that."

She better. Family is good, but someone's got to do the dirty work once in a while.

*

If she thought this would stop her from thinking, she was wrong. In fact, she can't think about anything else; her head and her heart are pouding like they're in a race, and she can't help but grunt, even though she said she wouldn't make any noise. Ha. Look at her, the expert in not keeping her promises. What had she said to Debbie? _You're safe, honey. Nothing's gonna happen to you._

Her fingers tighten on Jackson's shoulders. It occurs to her that she doesn't know his first name, and she wants to laugh. 

"Harder," she says instead.

Jackson's got her hauled up against the wall. Her pants are down to her ankles, but his are clinging to his ass, too tight. Bea's been privy to years of gossip, and even though she wasn't really listening, she can't help but think: ah, so that's why the girls thought he was gay at first. 

He pounds into her harder and maybe it's her head knocking against the hard concrete of the wall or maybe she's finally getting what she wants, she can't think, she can only suffer what's happening, which is what she wanted, what she's been doing all this time but without the grief, the suffocating and all-encompassing grief. Something sour and dirty builds up in her stomach.

He looks at her. Her eyes aren't closed, and his are dilated and serious, sad. She bites her lip when he hits a good spot, tearing a chunk of flesh in the process, but the pain doesn't register. He doesn't seem to notice either. 

Eventually he comes and she does, too, surprised, soon after. She sags against the wall, his dick slipping out of her. People might have heard, seen, even – even though he took his precautions, he always does, he's anal like that – but she can't bring herself to give a shit. 

She crouches down while he removes the condom and wraps it in a tissue. She rummages in her pocket for cigarettes, but he gets there before her. He hands her one – which is good, considering hers probably got crumpled in the frenzied removal of clothes part of their tryst. She only smokes with him, because of what she says to the others: no drugs. She doesn't care, destroying herself is the aim. He lights it for her, too, but he seems to be somewhere else. 

"Thanks," she says. 

He nods. She wonders if he's thinking the same thing she is, already trying to find the next thing that will make his mind blank for a little more than a few seconds at a time, berating himself for only finding temporary cures.

*

Mariana isn't actually stirring shit. She's mad, sure, Franky is a bitch and Mariana is seriously reconsiderig siding with her, especially considering her popularity level, but she also knows that she's five feet two and the least impressive of the women here are twice as big as her. There's bold and then there's suicidal.

"What are you doing here?"

Mariana swivels around. Kim, Franky's bitch, is looking at her, her hands on her hips. Mariana is surprised to find that she looks fierce, like her whole existence doesn't revolve around fucking Franky.

"Visiting, what does it look like I'm doing?"

Though actually she's kind of just sitting there, waiting either for Franky to come and apologize or for someone to make trouble so she can say it wasn't her fault later on. Prison is fucking boring. Kim flicks her a mildly amused look, like she thinks she's a brat which, let's face it, she is, and plops down on the bench next to her. It's not as hot as it was a few weeks ago – apparently that was one of the worst heatwaves of the summer, Mariana can't imagine what is was like in here – but the sun is still beating down pretty hard. 

Kim hums, but she doesn't try to initiate conversation. She just shuts her eyes and leans back, enjoying the sun. It stresses Mariana out, to be honest.

"What are you even doing here, _puta_?"

Kim ignores the insult, shrugs. "Same as you, I guess."

"How many years?"

Kim turns towards her, cracks one eye open, feline. She grins. "Let's just say I'm not getting out anytime soon. What did _you_ do?"

Mariana hesitates, but honestly, it's not like they're not going to know at some point or other, and besides she's bored and Kim is hot. If she's going to only be able to fuck girls for ten years, she better start making friends.

"I had this boyfriend..." she laughs, wonders how many of the women's stories here start with that phrase. "Cliché, right? Anyway, he wanted me to... you know. Help him, with drugs. I did it for a few years, then I got caught."

"Muling, you mean?"

"Sure, if you wanna call it that." Pedro has lots of names for it, but he never called it 'muling', never called her a 'mule', fortunately for him and unfortunately for her, because she probably would've punched him in the face. At the trial they had other words, fancier words. But yeah – drug mule. That's what she is, that's what she was, right?

"Well, at least you're not dead," Kim says philosophically, still smiling.

"That's a pretty low bar."

Kim shrugs again, like, _get used to it._ "Wentworth's not exactly Club Med, you know?"

"I figured," Mariana says, suddenly sullen.

They don't really talk after that. The need to move is thrumming under Mariana's skin but for some reason Kim's presence deters her. It seems like they're waiting... for something, someone maybe. Well, if it's someone it's probably Franky, but judging from that screamy business earlier she had other things to deal with. Mariana considers telling Kim that, but doesn't. News travel fast, she probably already knows. And if she doesn't, information is power. Mariana might have done some pretty dumb things in the past, but she's not actually stupid.

Eventually Mariana dozes off, too, which in hindsight might not be the best thing to do in a yard full of convicted felons, but whatever, she has killer reflexes. When she wakes up Franky Doyle is staring down at her, hands on her hips, leaning against the wooden table, her smile smug. Her right eye is circled with black and purple. Mariana blinks. Not so killer, then.

"Hey, kid," Franky says, and it's funny how that simple word is enough to get Mariana's blood boiling.

She holds it in. Shit like this is what got her here, after all. Time she started acting smart, right? She goes to chew rageously on her gum before she realizes she doesn't actually have any. Prison is seriously lame.

"I got a job for you," Franky says.

"Sounds ominous," Kim pipes up from next to Mariana on the bench. Mariana almost jumps; she'd forgotten she was here.

Franky doesn't reply. Ominous or not, when she strides back through the yard in direction of the compound, they follow wordlessly. If there's one thing Mariana's good at, it's instinct, and that woman – well, better follow her.

*

Conveniently, it's laundry time, and the inmates are still afraid enough of Franky that they can have the room for themselves. Kim immediately starts folding. Mariana climbs on one of the table and crosses her legs, leaning an elbow on her knee. 

"What do you want?"

Franky raises an eyebrow, licks her lips. Nervous tick, but Mariana feels a tiny bit hot nevertheless. Great. "I don't know, are you done being a brat?"

That'll take care of the heat, then. Mariana doesn't answer, which Franky considers a sign of acquiescence.

Franky jerks her chin towards Kim, who obediently trots from her station and fits herself under Franky's arm. "Kim here tells me you used to be in the crack business."

Seriously, how does she know that already? They haven't said a word to each other since Mariana told Kim. Fucking _hechiceras_.

"What's it to you?"

"I need you to do something for me."

Mariana leans back on her hands. "Yeah? What're you prepared to pay for it?"

Mariana doesn't expect Franky to spring forward; she breathes sharply when the back of her head hits the table, startled by the pain. Franky's grip is sure and hard on her throat, tight enough that Mariana feels like she might walk around with the imprint of her hands on her skin for a while.

"Maybe I wasn't clear enough," Franky says smoothly, like she's really done with all that shit. Not a good day, then. "I wasn't asking."

Mariana struggles to put her hands up, surrender. "Wow, okay," she wheezes when Franky finally lets her go. She rubs her throat with her palms. "Thought you were gonna finish me there for a sec."

Franky's back to looking smug and composed, the flash of rage that appeared for a few seconds now completely gone. "Just wanted to clarify how things work here. You're not in a position to bargain." She jerks a thumb at the door. "You wouldn't last ten minutes unprotected out there. Trust me, you don't want to know what they do to pretty things like you."

Mariana swallows. She's half-convinced that Franky is exaggerating, but you can never be too sure, right? The fact that Kim doesn't look even remotely amused makes her even more determined to not push her luck. 

"Okay. What?"

"You need to apply for a job in the kitchen."

"Why?"

"You don't need to know why. The cook left a week ago and there's a few slots open. If you can't get in, go see Karen, tell her you wanna redeem yourself or some bullshit like that. Okay?"

Mariana shrugs. 

"And then you do what I tell you."

Franky looks oddly determined, like she has something to prove, but it's not like Mariana is going to ask. The next few hours are mostly silent; Mariana goes to work because apparently it's not enough that she's in prison, she also has to _work_ and what the fuck, honestly. But she folds and steampresses (carefully, she's heard the horror tales, and seen Franky's hand, which is still not completely healed) like a good girl. When Franky finally leaves the room, she exhales a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Kim doesn't volunteer conversation, so Mariana keeps working – but still, she's more relaxed.

When the dinner bell comes, stark and screeching in the tiny space, Mariana feels like her hands are going to fall off. She hangs her head. Kim starts slipping off the door. 

"Hey, wait," Mariana says, before she can think about it.

Kim stops on her tracks. "What?"

"Why did your boss ask me about what I did before?"

Kim chuckles. "She's not my boss. You can call her Franky." A beat. "It's not gonna make any difference if she decides she has it in for you, honestly. But – yeah. Why do you think?"

Mariana startles, taken aback. "Really? I thought – she's not the type."

Something dark descends on Kim's face, clouding over her eyes. "Yeah, well," she says, her voice harder than Mariana's ever heard it, "you know what they say. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

*

Outside night is a synonym for quiet; here it's the other way around. During the day there are times when everything is swallowed up in a sort of cautious hush, precipitated by the end of riots and too many guards with guns and batons they won't hesitate to use. At night most of them are home, and in the dark everyone feels like they're one step away from freedom. In the tight cells everything resounds: sobs and ugly tears, screeched insults, declarations, the sick crunch of inter-cell fights no one ever breaks up, the screams of those for whom it's the first time in the slot. 

Franky's been here long enough that she's gotten used to it; by now she can even read before going to sleep, and all the noise is like a distant radio. Which probably explains why she doesn't hear the steps until it's too late, they're close and the door is opening. Franky's brain works fast, but not fast enough. They have the keys, she thinks. How did they get the keys? She was wrong to think Jackson was incorruptible, the others were right, Franky is too romantic -- pussy really does the job for everyone, and of course Red is taking advantage. Erica won't let it stand, but it's always been hard for her to keep the guards under her control. They respect her sporadically; for some reason that makes Franky angry, furious even, which is stupid seeing how often she's angry with Erica too. She should be more careful. 

That's the only thing in her mind when they come in, waking her up: I should have been more careful.

But she wasn't. The first one - she thinks it's Simone, but can't be sure - gets at her quickly, stabbing something sharp in her stomach. Not good times for Franky Doyle, that's for sure. She's barely recovered from last time, and she's been punched so many times those last few days that her jaw feels like it's made of chalk when the other's fist hits it. Couldn't they aim for somewhere else? That and the slot, she's a complete mess. Still, she fights back, she's never been the type to take it lying down, even if she is this time, literally. She tries to get on her feet but it's like someone's stabbing her again, even though she knows it's just the pain. The guards have to get here soon, otherwise she'll bleed out. What a stupid way to die. 

Nothing's ever completely silent here, or completely dark; Franky catches a sliver of the second face and jerks back in surprise. The pain weaves itself in her muscles and cramps her shoulder. Simone - it must be her, or one of her lapdogs, they all look the same, burly and moronic - doesn't stop hitting her, methodically, like she's taking no pleasure in it. Maybe not Simone then. Franky opens her mouth to talk but misses. The shiv comes back and tears at the skin of her face. Franky's not vain, but she hopes to fuck she won't have a scar. Her voice comes back, she screams -- well, no, she doesn't scream, it's a groan, like she imagines soldiers groan when they charge. Not a squealer. When she gets fucked she keeps her mouth shut. She's been imagining that Erica wouldn't, and it's hot. 

She thrashes, hunger coming to her chest, since her stomach's in a poor state. She does have reasons to survive: for one, she needs to see Erica give in, and second, who's going to take care of her people if she's not here? Family's family. It's not her fault Doreen - Bea was never part of the family, that's what Doreen doesn't get. You do everything for family, but the rest are collateral damage. Bea might have been broken but she was shady and educated, slightly unbalanced, not the good person to have on your team. Franky knows what she's doing. Not her fault the others didn't trust her. Well - for now she's the one paying for it.

It's a good thing they're not as sadistic as Jacs was. Franky lands a few punches, she hears bones cracking and there are footsteps, she feels herself gaining the advantage. Especially she's left with only one attacker, the other - the one whose face she could only glimpse at - disappeared just before fucking Jackson and Fletcher and even Vera turn up with a fucking escort.

Franky smirks at them just long enough before fake-Simone's fist hits her stomach again.

"You sure took your time, mates," she says. 

It takes a while for them to pull the two of them apart. Franky makes a point of thrashing a little more when they do, because there's getting blamed for it and then there's the rumor that's going to spread that she was the victim and that she lost, and one of those is more dangerous than the other. Erica can say what she wants, but they're already locked up and these days it's not that easy to hang someone anymore, so what could possibly get worse? Sure, there's Franky's appeal, but --

She tries to catalogue her injuries in her head. Fuck, fuck. She starts to panic a little, despite herself. She better not fucking die. Okay. Her stomach, a few ribs, her right eyebrow's busted... she can't feel her lips, so there's probably something there as well. That slash on her cheek. She's going to know the infirmary better than her own cell, this is ridiculous.

This time she struggles not to pass out. She doesn't ask where Erica is. Eyes heavy-lidded, she lets their questions wash over her, was there more than one attacker (of course, are they blind), can she say something, what year is it. She focuses on that. What year is it. She thinks about it all the way to the infirmary, someone's hands pressing on her stomach, but she can't remember. 

*

A few things happen while she's out: 

Mariana gets accepted into the kitchen staff. The new chef, an overweight woman convicted for drowning her two children, looks her over and asks her if she's a good worker. Mariana fights the urge to snap a bubble of gum et her and says yes. Girl's gotta do... she decides she likes Kim. No nonsense, at least. Franky is more frightening, but also compelling, which is never a good combination. 

After the Franky accident, which everyone hears about some two seconds after it happened, Jackson and two other guards raid Bea's unit. Bea doesn't move from where she is, leaning insolently against the wall outside her cell. She looks bored all throughout, even as they flip over her mattress and tear up her pictures. It makes Liz remember the first time, when she'd nearly cried because she couldn't find her kid's picture. Now, well -- her kid's dead. Picture or no picture. 

After it's done Jackson comes and stands in front of her, asks her if anyone left the unit that night.

"How?" Bea asks, raising an eyebrow. 

Doreen slides next to Liz. She brushes against her; her hands are damp.

Jackson tilts his head. He reminds everyone that they better cooperate. Some of the women ogle him, leer. Others look profoundly bored - they want to go back to sleep.

The two guards file out of the room but Jackson lingers. He looks at Bea once again, and it looks like he's going to wink or something like that. Liz wonders what's going on. She knows - everyone knows - that they're sleeping together, but that's something else. She doesn't get angry easily, but she doesn't like to be an accomplice to things she wasn't warned about. 

"Fuck," she says. 

Doreen turns around and gives her a surprised look. She never swears, usually, even when she's drunk. 

Jackson leaves the room, his boots loud on the concrete. Bea slides back into her cell. The door doesn't clang when she shuts it. Noise outside, the guards coming back to lock them up.

Vera is sent in - again - to tell Governor Davidson about what happened. As usual, she's the last to be informed, but before she can be mad about that a spike of worry hits her in the stomach. 

"How is she?" she asks frantically.

Vera gives her a neutral look - well, as close as neutral as she gets. Her eyes are clear on her opinion: _she got what she deserved_. She never quite got around to liking Franky, who usually even the guards are fond of, because she's fun and her constant strutting is entertaining. Not to mention the good quality... entertainment she puts on the prison tapes. Everyone enjoys Franky, Franky enjoys everyone. It works both ways.

"She'll be fine," Vera says. "A scar or two, nothing out of the ordinary."

Nonetheless, Erica tells her secretary to block her calls, she isn't here. She grabs her coat. She'll be in the infirmary; Vera doesn't have to follow her. She does anyway. 

*

"I should have let her hang herself, that bitch," is the first thing Franky hisses when she regains consciousness. This is getting personal. Warned that she's awake by the sound of her voice, Doctor Patel swans in from the other side of the room. He looks over her, checks her bandages. His brow is furrowed. She doesn't need to ask to know that she's not going to see the inside of her cell for a while. She'll miss her posters. When he starts to talk she tunes him out after a few seconds, not interested in what he has to say. There's nothing to ask or wait for, so she falls asleep again. 

When she wakes up for the second time, her entourage is slightly more interesting. Meaning that Erica is sitting in the chair next to her bed. It's dark, so it must be after hours, she should be back home by now. She's asleep, her face hard, her brows furrowed like maybe she's having a nightmare. Franky tries to extend a hand to shake her, but it hurts too much. 

"Hey," she says instead. Her voice is hoarse. Everything about her hurts. 

Erica jerks awake. She scrubs a hand over her face un-selfconciously, then starts when she realizes where she is. She clears her throat. 

"Franky," she says, and Franky is grateful that she can't hide the relief. 

"Didn't know you cared," she says, because she can't help it. 

Erica huffs out a small laugh. To be honest, it does feel like a respite: two days ago they were half-fucking in the shelves and Franky was so pissed, and Erica was feeling guilty and the whole thing was a gigantic mess because what's it ever going to be other than that? But now it's fine. It's simple, for once: Erica is relieved, and Franky is grateful that she's here. 

_Of course I care. That's the problem._ Erica doesn't say it, of course, but Franky hears it clear enough. 

"You have a knack for getting into trouble," she says instead.

"Nothing new about that."

"Doctor Patel..." she picks up the chart at the end of Franky's bed, to which Franky isn't handcuffed. Nice. So they do know that she was the victim back there - not that it's that hard, but jail officials have taken being blind to an art form. Hopefully they didn't broadcast it. "Doctor Patel says it's going to take a while for you to recover. Apparently the knife wounds are shallow, you're going to have a few scars; you just need to rest, let your ribs recover. And this -" she points to Franky's face, which must not look exceedingly pretty right now, "should be okay."

"So what, you're gonna be my nurse?"

Respite over; Erica levels Franky her usual tired-of-your-bullshit look. Though she's not tired, of course; she loves it. "I'm serious, Franky. You need to tell me what happened."

"What for? It happened; it's not gonna happen again. As far as I'm concerned, it's all you need to know."

Erica's face hardens. "Good thing that you're not the authority on that, then."

"And you are?" Franky coughs out a disbelieving laugh. Pain ricochets in her chest. "How's that working for you, huh? Any prisoners mauled in their own cells lately?"

"Was it Bea Smith? Was she trying to get back at you for..." She's fishing. 

"You figure it out."

Erica ducks her head. It's not defeat, though; she's only gathering her strength. Franky doesn't have any to spare, if she's being honest. "Franky," she says when she looks back up, her eyes steely, determined, "I know you're angry at me, but I hope you can-"

Yes, she is. The remembrance of it hits her like another fist to the stomach. She's getting tired of those. "I fucking am. It's not like I don't have a good reason, _Governor_." She spits it out: you wouldn't even be Governor without me. Not that she knows that, though she probably does, on some unconscious level. Franky doesn't intend to talk about it anytime soon. "But do tell. Is there something else I can do to help you get a new fucking desk?" 

Erica sighs. "Franky -"

"Maybe you could way until I don't have three ribs broken, how about that?"

Now she's grinding her teeth together. They're getting somewhere at least. "And while we're at it, how about you stop pretending that you're in love with your fiancé? You don't even wear his ring anymore and I'm not blind, Erica -" she doesn't say it this time, _it's Miss Davidson for you_ "I can see the way you look at me, can't you just give for once?" Fuck it. She swore she'd keep calm but look at her, she's almost crying. She can't even pretend it's a game now. "Fuck, Erica -"

"I broke up with him," Erica says brusquely. 

That shuts her up. She stares for a while, searching in Erica's face for traces of lying, though why she would lie she can't say, that seems a little too cruel, even for her.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"That's -"

"-why I don't wear the ring, yes. Now, if we could talk about something else, like maybe," she stands up and starts inching away from the bed, smoothing her crumpled pants. She must have been sleeping on that chair for a while, "why Bea wants you dead so bad. I know she's top dog now, but she has no reason -"

Franky ignores the pain, reaches until her fingers are secured around Erica's wrist. Her body is screaming but she doesn't care, there are drugs for that. Erica's pulse jumps. She doesn't try to step away. 

"Erica," Franky says. 

Erica sighs. This time it doesn't sound disapproving, merely resigned, like she's decided she can't fight anymore, she's tired of it. Franky's heart jumps in her ribcage.

"Come here," she whispers. 

Erica comes like an automaton, like her entire body is a magnet and Franky is too powerful a force to resist. Franky can't see her eyes clearly, caught in a blade of cutting yellow light. She slumps back on the chair. Franky is holding her breath, or at least she thinks she is, unless it's her ribs pushing down. She unwraps her fingers from Erica's wrist carefully, afraid she might bolt. She doesn't. Franky touches her hair. Erica sighs again. 

Franky doesn't know what she will do: if this is the end of it, if Erica really does lean forward and kiss her, having just said that she's left her husband-to-be. Sure, it's what she wanted all along, more or less, but then again she's never been good at thinking forward, and there - she can't say it doesn't terrify her. Still, as usual, there's something hungry in her, voracious even, that wants to take Erica and consume her until there's nothing left for the rest of the world. Sometimes it takes over; right now she's too tired, too emotional. Franky will blame it on the drugs. 

But Erica doesn't kiss her. In fact, she doesn't move for a long time, until she inches the chair closer, and then she drops her head and presses her forehead against Franky's arm. If Franky didn't know her better she'd say she's crying. But she's not crying: she's breathing, shaking slightly, a slight, constant thrumming. She sounds tired. She looks tired. 

"Erica," Franky says again. 

She's forgotten what she was mad about. Erica is - infuriating, so good at pretending not to see things that are blatantly, obviously there, but she's also this, vulnerable and afraid and Franky might be a convicted criminal, it doesn't mean she can't feel. Not that she's gonna tell that to anyone, of course.

Her teeth biting into her lower lip (the pain), she raises her other arm to touch Erica's cheek. It's like her fingers are carrying electricity: Erica bolts upwards, gives a flashing, panicked look. Then she rights herself, says a few words that Franky doesn't hear, and leaves, practically running in her five-inch heels. 

Well, shit. 

*

When Liz shows up, Franky's first thought is, maybe it's a dream. She's been pumped full of drugs those last few days, and she's not a hundred percent sure that the conversation with Erica actually happened. It sounds doubtful. 

She smiles at Liz. Her face can't do much else, which is a nice change. It's not even a smirk. "Liz. Hey."

Liz, of course, frowns and looks worried. Does she ever look anything other than worried? You can't blame her for boozing, honestly. "Franky."

"Why are you here?"

Liz jerks a thumb behind her. "On my way to the Governor's office." Which means: hopefully they don't see me talking to you. Franky isn't offended, though. She's a bit of a black sheep these days. 

"Yeah, you're pals now, right? Tell her hi for me," she drawls, winking. 

Liz's face remains blank. She looks nervous. "Look," she hesitates, "I want to talk to you."

"Talk."

"I know who did this to you." She says this like it's a big revelation, like Franky will start and clamp her hands to her heart. 

Franky tries to laugh, and then stops. "Yeah, me too. I was there."

That makes Liz even more nervous, for some reason. "I think it's taking a step too far," she says. "Even with what you did to Doreen."

"It had to be done."

"I know you'd never hurt a kid." She doesn't say, maybe it's better if Kayia doesn't come here anymore, but they've all thought it. Only the old Red would be stupid enough to voice it out loud, though. Franky nods. "I wanna help you. If you just... don't reciprocate."

"I have to."

"No you don't; this was her answer. The only thing you have to do is let it go. It'll be better for everyone."

"I can't 'just let it go', Liz." Now she's awake. "I have four ribs broken. It's gonna take more than a phone call to settle the score. Besides, you know as well as me that if Red stays top dog, things are gonna go to shit. She doesn't care about anything but herself."

"You think it'll be better with you?"

Franky shrugs, _what choice is there?_ "It worked before."

"It didn't. Why do you think you're here?"

"I'm here because Red is an unhinged bitch and her magic pussy keeps Jackson from telling the Governor about it. It's not about wrong and right. It's about luck. I was in the slot but now I'm out, Liz. Red's not going to last. If you want to help me, that's good, but you know how I work." Franky's hoping that Liz also knows that everything she said about family and protecting her friends is true. She doesn't say it. 

Liz sighs. She ducks her head. Since Bea arrived and Meg Jackson died, she looks like she put on ten years. "I know," she says. 

She doesn't linger too long after that. Franky dozes off to sleep and it gives her the opportunity to slip out. When Franky wakes up she feels drained of everything, anger, resentment, strength. She looks at the door and she knows that Liz will help her. For better or for worse, right? Sometimes she can't imagine how she would live outside again; in her worst nightmares she ends up back at the Wentworth doors because she couldn't cope, didn't remember any of the rules. 

*

It takes three weeks for Franky's ribs to heal. They put a guard in front of the infirmary door; Liz visits her sometimes, though not with Kim, Boomer and Mariana, who's getting on well in the kitchen, apparently. Erica comes by, too, once in a while, though she avoids saying anything even remotely alluding to the situation between them. Instead it's all tutoring, even though Erica probably has other things to do. Franky doesn't: she makes Kim bring her her books, but apart from that and studying, most of her time is spent trying to keep herself from thinking. Lucky for her, she got some practice in the slot - she just can't work out frantically like she did then, but it's fine. She plans. Outside the infirmary, Kim tells her, Bea is still fucking Jackson and enforcing that stupid no-drugs policy, which makes half the prison love her and the other hate her. It works for Franky, sort of: she'll just have to tip the balance a little. She doesn't exactly want another riot, but if it's what it takes, she'll do it. 

When Caroline, the new guard, a bland and blank-faced automaton with her hair permanently tied in a ponytail, comes in the second Doctor Patel tells her she's discharged and tells Franky to follow her to the Governor's office, Franky isn't even surprised.

She struts in as best as she can with her still mildly dolorous ribs, leans against the doorframe. The corner of the room is tantalizing.

"Already missing me?" They had a session just yesterday. 

Erica gives a wry smile, one from the early days. Haha, Franky Doyle, what a joker. "Sit down, Franky."

She does. The coffee is waiting, and Franky takes a sip. Black, one sugar, just like she likes it. Outside she used to say she took it black, strong, but it's actually disgusting. She hums low in her throat, a noise of satisfaction. Erica's head snaps up from her papers. When she realizes it, she blushes. Franky smirks. 

"What's up? Did you want me to rat someone out today, or was that just an excuse to see my beautiful face?" She gestures to her cheek. She's still got a few scars: according to Patel, they should disappear at some point or another, but Franky isn't counting on it. It's not like she lives in the best conditions, after all. Wentworth is hardly the Ritz. 

Erica folds her hands together at the centre of the table, just in front of her heart. It's her counselor face, Franky remarks to herself. "I just want to know how you are."

For some reason that irritates Franky. "Bullshit," she spits. "Look, Erica, why don't you just get it out of your system? Then you can stop stepping around it like a coward." Well, that didn't take long. She's been holding it in for a while; now it's time.

Erica's face crumples with anger. "You don't know what you're talking about, Franky."

Franky leans forward, elbows on her knees, ignoring her ribs' protest. That fucking desk. If she didn't feel so safe behind it, maybe Erica would let go for more than one second at a time. Sometimes Franky wants her so much she feels her skin burn with it. Sometimes she's afraid it'll show through; it she touches Erica she might leave scars, burns in the shape of handprints.

"Really? Then why did you break up with your fiancé? Why did you let me kiss you - what, three times now?" Erica flinches, "I'm sure you're counting too. You've thought about it: one time, just once, and then I'll forget all about it. Why don't you give it a try? Or if you don't, at least stop lying. I'm sick of it." She didn't realize, but now she's standing up, looming over the desk, and Erica's breathing so hard, her chest heaving with each inhale. Her hands are still folded, white at the knuckle. They look different without the ring. 

The air is thick, hot like it gets every time they start talking about this. Now if only they stopped _talking_... maybe Franky could focus on other things, prison hierarchy, that business in the kitchen, even fucking Kim. She's not entirely lying, or speaking about Erica: one time. Maybe it'll get it out of her system too.

Erica bares her teeth. "Just because I broke up with Mark doesn't mean -"

"Right. Mark. This has nothing to do with him, you know it as well as me." She leans forward even more; one more centimeter and her breath will be on Erica's lips, and she'll be staring her in the eye. "Why don't you use some of that initiative you're always talking about, Erica? Huh?"

"Stop this," Erica hisses. "Stop." 

She reaches a hand out, probably to push Franky away, but it's a wrong move: Franky uses it to pull her forward and of course they end up kissing, it was a given. Every time they get close enough they fall into each other like it's fucking destined, like they're constantly orbiting each other. It would scare Franky if she ever let herself think about it. Kissing: really it's more of a collision, their teeth clinking and their lips mashed against each other. Erica doesn't seem to mind, though, she makes a sound low in her throat, deep and animal.

This time she doesn't bother pretending to push Franky away. Her hands at Franky's shoulders are curled into claws, digging into the naked skin. From time to time she tears her lips away and bares her throat for Franky to latch on, but her point of gravity seems to want to rise up, come closer until they melt into each other. Franky secures one hand at the nape of Erica's neck, grip iron, and uses the other to slide an arm around Erica's waist and pull her out of her chair. Erica stumbles on her pumps. 

"What -" she starts, but Franky claims her lips again before she can say anything. God, it's hot. Franky's hair is stuck to her forehead, she can't think, less alone worry.

Erica ends up knocking her knees against the wood of the desk. The sound, like clay breaking, seems to pull her out of her trance. She takes charge, pushing the papers around them, slinging her legs forward until she's sitting on a cleared area of the desk, Franky standing between her almost obscenely spread knees. Franky can see she doesn't want to think either: she takes Franky's head in her hands, her fingers spanning mouth, cheeks, ears and kisses her again, deep and hot and furious. Franky presses their chests together. A moan crashes in the wet space between their mouths.

When Erica finally pulls away her eyes are desperate.

"Lock the door."

Normally that would be Franky's cue to make a smartass comment, but her skin is buzzing like the blood is trying to make it out. She paces herself, tries not to run to the door, but it doesn't change anything: as soon as she's back to the desk Erica's legs wrap around her like a vice.

"C'mon," Erica bites off, hiding her face in Franky's neck. She bites, hard. 

How's that for a paradox: there's no mystery deeper than Erica Davidson for Franky, but when it comes to sex her instinct is infallible, she could tell to the detail how Erica likes it. She puts her arm up, bent to press against Erica's windpipe, not hard enough to hurt to really hurt but hard. Erica's forehead immediately drops on her forearm, her skin damp. Now she won't bite.

She's wearing pants for once but they're not that difficult to undo either. Her belt - leather - goes sliding out with a whispery sound that makes Erica shiver. Franky files it into her mind for later, but for now there's no time, any minute now and someone will come knocking at the door and Erica will have to say something, answer. Still: now that Franky's got her hands on her it's not likely that she'll let her go, and talking about those scars here they are, burning into the broad of Erica's tanned thighs. Erica's breath is a wheeze, she's not saying anything, but the signs don't lie: when Franky presses her thumb to her clint a shiver rolls through her body, shaking her shoulders, hard. Her teeth clink again when she inhales, sharp. Franky wants to kiss her, so she does it, hard, keeping her hand between Erica's thighs. 

For some reason this feels more intimate, Erica sitting on her desk in the harsh sunlight with her pants lying on the floor in front of her, but she doesn't say stop, doesn't push Franky away. Maybe they're too far along to come back now; maybe it's just a good excuse. Maybe Erica doesn't need excuses anymore. Who fucking knows, with her. 

"Franky," she rasps. 

Franky looks in her eyes, surprised. Their mouths are an inch from one another's, and Franky thinks that she could kiss her until she bled from it. Erica's hand twists in the hair at the nape of her neck, forces her to tilt her head. She bites a kiss at the edge of her lips, a sharp nick, and then she pushes her head down. 

Franky laughs. She knew it, she did. She does what she's told, though, her arm slips and she kneels, gripping Erica's thighs in a hard hold. Erica slides down without resisting at all, as though she were inanimate. Franky knows she's not because of the fire that smolders in her heavy-lidded eyes, which she catches from time to time; and her shivers, the economical but present movements of her hands, the way she eventually hooks a leg over Franky's shoulder. 

"Good," Franky whispers soothingly, patting her thigh, as though she weren't so turned-on she could barely breathe.

When her mouth finally touches Erica's sodden clit Erica's body spasms, her hips hitching forward. Franky breathes through her nose, hums low in her throat; with her hands she roots Erica to the table. She digs her fingers deep, so that the urge to reach between her own legs and touch herself doesn't take over. There are layers to this she doesn't even want to consider: how much she wants to see Erica unravel, give up control, how much she lo-

There's a noise outside. Footsteps. Erica's head swivels but Franky doesn't stop, gets at her job harder, twisted swirls of her tongue and broad licks. Erica's eyelids flutter closed. Her heel presses against Franky's vertebrae, the hook of her bra. She releases one of Erica's thighs to reach upwards, sneak a hand under Erica's blouse. If she slides forward an inch more she'll fall straight in Franky's lap, and Franky can't guarantee what'll happen if she does. Fuck -- she cups Erica's breast; when her fingers graze her nipple Erica lets out a moan, sinks her teeth into her lips. Franky hopes, viciously, that it'll leave a mark. 

Now -

The door opens. 

Franky can't even analyze Erica's horrified face before she hears, behind her, Channing's voice, dripping with smugness. "Well, Erica, sounds like -"

He stops abruptly.


	7. Chapter 7

It all happens very fast, and at the same time not at all. Before Erica can blink Franky's got Channing shoved against the door, a plastic fork poised over his eye. Erica blinks. Channing sneers. Franky turns to Erica, her eyes black, dangerous, as though she were waiting for instructions.

 _Snap back into it,_ Erica thinks. Her mind blank, she collects her pants on the ground and slides the belt back into the loops. Channing's gaze flits over her, but Franky forces his head up, her knuckles white, her eyes ferocious.

"Channing," Erica says, to check if her voice hasn't deserted her. It's not as firm as she'd have wanted, but it'll have to do. "What are you doing here?"

Channing's Adam apple bobs. He looks furious. "I had a key made," he says between clenched teeth. "I thought it would be easier; though clearly you value your privacy."

For a second Erica doesn't say anything; laughter threatens to bubble out of her lips at the sheer preposterousness of the idea. Of course he thought it was okay to get a key to her office. What a pig.

She looks over at Franky, still standing still, awaiting her orders. It occurs to Erica that for the first time in months, she's the one in control. From anywhere she stands, a hospital bed, the slot, the other side of Erica's desk, Franky's always been the one holding the reins, something in her eyes to entice Erica, draw her in, burn her, ruin her. But now... now Erica could swear that if she asked Franky to kill Channing, she would do it. 

Interesting.

"Give her the key," she tells Channing. "Do you have any others?"

Channing shakes his head no. Franky collects the key, locks the door again and pockets it; the slight woolen noise of it slipping against the fabric of Franky's sweatpants sends a small thrill running down Erica's spine. She's not going to see that key again – that too, she could swear on. And say she used to be so uncertain. 

Channing's kept silent for as long as he could, apparently; the fork doesn't daunt him when he opens his mouth and finally spouts his venom. "You're not going to survive this, Erica. Allying with prisoners? That's a step too far, even for you. You're not going to last one more week in this place, and you'll be lucky if you don't end up with _them_. If you let me go now, I'll try and make them give you a recommendation letter. Who knows, maybe a severance package."

Erica smiles thinly. Control. She'd forgotten how good it felt. "Sorry, that's not enough for me. How about having Franky here jab that fork into your eye, huh?" She won't do it. She might do it.

Channing's face is clear, the fear unmasked. But: _and then what?_

"I don't know," Erica shrugs. "Maybe a prisoner burst into my office and decided to take revenge. It happens, you know, when officials assault them. It's disturbingly common. And we all know you've got a thing for women in uniform, don't we? That's what you told me, at least, on the numerous occasions you took advantage of your visits at Wentworth to come onto me."

She can see jealousy cross Franky's face, quick as lightning, ferocious. The fork moves, hovers over Channing's cheek, threatening to bite into the flesh.

"Franky."

Erica smoothes the lapels of her jacket her ribs, her brain running overdrive. Her heart is hammering in her chest, but she's pretty sure Channing is too afraid to notice anything now. And Franky knows her, better than she'd like, better than she ever anticipated. 

Erica moves behind her desk. At her right hand, the drawer, and inside it her gun (ironically, Channing was the one who told her to get one: "You have to defend yourself. They're monsters."); at her left, the computer and the phone. She could spin something. She's good at that. But Channing won't keep his mouth shut, not now, not anymore. Not unless he has incentive. 

When she looks up Franky is still looking at her, expectant. Heat pools at the base of Erica's stomach. Her henchman. In the end she makes quick work of it: she's kept the files back when it happened, buried in the depths of her computer. Now she'll probably have to erase the film from today, or take it for herself. She licks her lips. 

"Alright," she says. "Here's what we're going to do. You have children, right?" Channing doesn't answer, but she remembers. She read all those files, too. She's always been a great reader; in university she used to be able to go through five books a day, in-between her classes, during lunch, before sleep. "And you love them?" Franky furrows her brows, unsure what that's all about. "I have here," she taps the computer screen, "a recording of a conversation you had with me about six months ago, about... _distractions_. Franky is going to take a step back, and you're going to leave here."

Channing bites the air. "You're bluffing," he says, his features puffy, cocky even in his terror. 

Erica shrugs tightly – her reign on her body is infinitely different from Franky's, whose strength is like some feline's, perfect and always dissimulated, ready to jump even as she sprawls and taunts. Go back home. Erica's not like that. Everything shows in the lines of her clothes: she's coiled, cold, she learned to project the power she doesn't always have a long time ago, long before she came to work here, like any woman in the workplace has to at one point or another. Channing's voice is loud when she starts playing the recording, crasser than she remembered. Channing screws his eyes shut. 

"Take a sick day or two," Erica continues after she's paused the recording, implacable. "This never happened; if anything surfaces, I'll make sure that your wife gets this tape." Without really thinking, she opens the drawer and slides the gun out. It feels good in her hand, smooth and heavy; her finger rests gently on the trigger, she's not shaking. "And if that's not enough... the prisoners and I have mended bridges," Channing snorts, "as you can see. I'm sure one of them would like to lend me assistance, in the form of friends on the outside. Are we clear?"

For a moment Channing doesn't move, and Erica can see the wheels turning in his head, the way he could try and get himself out of that mess. But he can't; Erica's not new to intrigue, and this plan is airtight. That's one of the reasons why she never wanted children – liabilities is the hardest word for it. Eventually he nods, tight, his jaw clenched. 

"Good."

Franky waits a little before releasing him, and Erica wonders where she got that fork, where she was hiding it while they were kissing. It should scare her, but it doesn't: Franky would never hurt her, she knows it out of instinct, without much tangible proof. It's like fear, in a way: irrational, but unshakable. Eventually she takes a step back; Channing glowers at them, breathing hard, while his fingers close on the doorknob. It takes him a moment to realize that the door is still locked. Erica's hand tightens on the gun, a knee-jerk reaction, but Franky grudgingly gets the key out and opens the door for him. She watches him totter out, leaning against the doorjamb, affecting nonchalance – but her eyes are dark, intent. While Erica was struggling with her feelings she used to have a line, to think that at least that Franky wasn't a killer, she wouldn't want to fuck a killer – but now she sees. Franky could kill; and for what it's worth, Erica probably could, too.

The door swings back shut. Erica releases a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. She falls into her chair like a puppet, strings cut. Franky smiles at her from the door. 

"That was intense," she smirks.

Erica rolls her eyes. She hasn't let go of the gun. Still, she says, "What, the sex or Channing?" plays into Franky's game, as always, unable to resist.

"Speaking of sex," Franky says, advancing in long predatory steps – but she spots the gun in Erica's hand and stops short.

She cocks her hip, leans against the desk. For a second it looks like she isn't sure whether it's safe to reach out; eventually her fingers brush against Erica's over the trigger. There goes her breath again, then. Looking up, Erica thinks that if she turned away, if their gazes unlocked, the gun might detonate on its own in protest. 

"You know how to use it?" Franky asks, her voice raw.

Erica could say: I took a few lessons when I bought it back when I started working here – it's true, but it's not what Franky's asking. _Have you ever used it?_ She shakes her head; clears her throat again, "No."

Franky's breathing is labored too, they're standing too close now, like Franky always used to initiate in the yard, stepping forward until there was no choice for Erica but to yield, take a step back, declare Franky the winner of her little game; her fingers close around Erica's, firm, certain.

"It's not that hard," she whispers. In a surprising gesture, she bends down and kisses their entwined fingers. She smiles at Erica's sharp intake of breath: under her palm the cold metal, on her knuckles Franky's fire. 

"Look," she says, kneeling in front of the chair. "The safety's the red button. You know how to load, right?" Erica nods wordlessly, swallows. "Right, then. You do this," she guides their fingers to cock the gun, the metallic noise ringing loud in silence, "and then you're ready to go. Here," and suddenly their hands are a fist, the gun is pointed at the door, where Channing was pinned not ten minutes ago; in the background, that red corner where they kissed for the first time. They wouldn't be here if Erica had been able to shoot that memory away, but she can't find it in her to regret anything – she's like that, anyway: she doesn't regret things after she's done them, there's no point. 

The idea flashes through her mind, maybe she could take that shot: the bullet would shoot clean through the wooden door and follow Channing in the corridor, get stuck right between his shoulder-blades, a better solution than blackmail, cleaner. Instead she relaxes her fingers, tears Franky away, fingers anchoring at her waist, digging; the gun falls on the carpet with a soft sound, not detonating even though it could have. Here we go again, Erica thinks just before she stops: her fingers in Franky's hair, that mouth on hers, biting hard, her hot tongue, fingers on her skull, her whole body pressing between Erica's thighs, tense and compact. 

She only tears away for a second to breathe, her mouth red, grinning, "I knew it."

This time Erica doesn't hesitate: she kicks her pants down, her belt whipping the air, and pushes Franky down, her hands on her shoulders. Franky doesn't protest; if anything she seems even more eager than Erica. Her hands gripping the underside of Erica's thighs, she dives forward, smile wolfish; when her mouth touches Erica's clit she has to bite her bottom lip not to scream. She's been waiting for this for a long time, longer than she's dared admit – and now...

"Come on," she growls, and Franky laughs, vibrations running up Erica's spine.

After that it doesn't take long. Franky's done it a hundred times before, and Erica can feel it, her tongue is strong and unhesitant, points, teases, laps. After a while she lets go of one of Erica's thighs and uses her fingers as well, pressing it to Erica's clit, massaging in tight and maddening circles. If sex with Mark had ever like that, that intense, that _good_ \- Erica looks away from Franky's bobbing head not to come too soon, screws her eyes shut and presses her forehead against her own shoulder – maybe she wouldn't have left. 

When Erica comes she feels like her bones are liquifying, like she's turning – again – to putty in Franky's hand. She doesn't make any noise, just a moan broken against her clenched teeth. Franky comes up, her chin shining, smile showing teeth. She kisses the inside of Erica's thigh, too hard to be playful. 

She kisses Erica full on the lips, long enough that Erica's got no choice but open her mouth and taste herself on her lips; when she pulls back it's only to whisper, "Partners in crime," and then she leans back in, and Erica feels like she's drinking fire. 

*

Bea isn't afraid of the dark.

She used to be. When she was a kid, her mother had to leave a nightlight near her bed and sing to her before she could forget about the monsters and sleep; and even later, as she grew up, she felt better with the door left ajar and a ray of light streaming in. But then there are a lot of things she was afraid of before she came here that don't frighten her anymore. Blood. Power. Darkness.

You can never really get used to the slot, which is why it's such a great means of torture: everyone can be driven to insanity by constant solitude and lack of food, toilets, and general necessities. Bea's no different. Some days she cowered and cried and screamed, she scraped at the door with her fingernails, begging for someone, anyone, to let her out; sometimes she just lay flat on her back and waited to die or to lose her mind. Maybe she did; but she's made her peace with the darkness, because in the end there's no greater darkness than grief. Debbie died and Bea dove headfirst, everything was pain and pain and more pain, darkness surrounded her, it chipped away at her bones and took every last ounce of kindness from her. 

"Do you feel empty?"

A shifting at her side. The obscurity is pleasant, for once – safe. It's kind of funny, in a twisted way, how things started getting safer just when she stopped caring.

"Not really. It's more like – it's more like all the things we could've done, the things we could've seen, that we'll never see or do, you know? Plans we had, things like that. That's why I did what I did, at first," he doesn't say what, but she can guess, "I was trying to fill my head so that I wouldn't hear her voice and see her face and remember all these plans... anyway. Not empty, really. More like, numb."

Somehow it's worse – but it would've been worse anyway –, knowing that what they're going through is so different that she can't even recognize the feeling. Believing that they were the same because the same thing had happened to them was tempting, reassuring, in a way. Now that's gone too. 

"Okay," she says. Her mouth feels like cotton. It's against her instincts, but she still goes on, "I just feel empty. I feel like... I was supposed to have an abortion, did you know that?" He doesn't; no one does except Harry, and he's probably forgotten by now. "Harry convinced me not to. Now I think maybe I should've. Would've saved us all some time and trouble." He flinches, but she pays him no attention. "I mean, wouldn't it be the same, if she'd never been there at all? I used to say people shouldn't have children if they can take care of them."

He doesn't say anything, and she remembers: that's what she appreciates in him, the leaden stillness, this overwhelming weariness of grief. At least they have that in common. 

They sit in silence for a while. Around them the prison life goes on, screams and virulent whispers, clangs of metal that the women shouldn't have, but always do. To anyone else it would be too loud, but you get used to everything, even this. They're good examples of how prison breaks you the most when you think it won't. 

Eventually he leans towards her, slowly, his face half shaded, and starts kissing her. She lets him; his hand travels from her chest to the string of her sweatpants. She thinks about saying no, but in the end it's easier to just close her eyes and wait. The old lullaby, the only song she remembers, sneaks into her mind, _She used to give me roses. I wish she could again, but that was on the outside, and things were different then..._

*

"The hairnet suits you," Franky snarks at lunch when Mariana shuffles lazily towards them. 

"Fuck off."

Kim nestles into Franky's side. "Nice apron, too."

"That job is fucking soul-sucking," Mariana complains.

Kim shrugs. "Beats mopping floors or factory work," she says. "Or even stuffing condoms full of scag up your arse. Pick your battles."

Mariana swings her ladle ferociously. "Whatever. I hope you know what you're doing, _boss_."

Franky's face darkens, but she doesn't comment. Mariana might be insolent, she isn't as stupid as she looks – she knows defying Franky can only lead to bad things, even with her reduced power. Kim lingers behind.

"You moron," she chides. "Do you even know how to keep your mouth shut?"

Mariana shrugs petulantly. The women starts raising their voices, asking to know what's holding up the queue, but Mariana only waves her dirty ladle at them, projecting speck of what's supposed to be rice flying everywhere. Kim frowns. 

"Get ready," she says. "Franky wants to start the operation tonight."

"What?"

Kim shakes her head. "You heard me. Be ready. And don't get fired before it happens."

On that, she grabs her tray and trots back to Franky, sliding next to her at the table where Liz is bent down on her food and Boomer is shaking with laughter, rocking back and forth in her chair. Mariana closes her mouth, nervous without reason; she's done dangerous shit before, and it's not like she doesn't know what's going on here, even though exactly how they're going to make it work isn't completely clear.

"Whose tits do I need to suck to get some fucking food?" a rough voice interrupts her thoughts.

"Yeah, yeah."

When she looks back up a few minutes later, Kim is looking at her from the table. She looks... not dangerous, not exactly, but as if something from Franky had rubbed off on her, tainted her. Mariana remembers the rumors. _Apparently she killed her old man with a nail gun, the crazy bitch_ , Kenna's words exactly. Mariana shakes her head. Creepy. 

*

Does anyone really want to learn how to handle a gun?

It means the necessity of using it – it means something lurking in the background, danger, fear. No one wants to have to wander into a gun store and choose one, knowing that the possibility of using it is there, waiting like a crouched animal. At least that's how it was for Franky: thirteen, one too many cigarette burns on her forearms and her mum holding up a shattered bottle of gin, the kids in the street calling her a dyke because of her dirty trainers and short hair. She saw one of them, Peter Jones, when she was transferred through Cessnock three years ago, but he didn't recognize her. 

When you've got it, though, when you've got the gun, all that changes. Once you know how to use it comes to mean control, security. Franky had liked that as soon as she'd shot it for the first time, at a pile of refuse in the wasteland behind her house: I can make fire shoot from my fingers. Cool. 

This is what it feels like. You never know how much you relished control until you don't have it anymore, and Franky's not going to say that the last few months haven't been shit, the slot, Erica, and just when she thought she'd got the Jacs situation under control Bea turning up with her dead kid and power fantasy. Speaking of which... once she's got the kitchen traffic back up, she'll have to take care of Bea. (That's the thing they don't tell you about family: once you're cast out, it's forever, and most of the time it's permanent, too.)

"What's going on?"

"Hm?"

Liz's placid eyes are fixed on her face. "What's going on?"

"With what?"

Liz shrugs, like she wants to ask, _what were you thinking_ , but she knows it's a bad idea, and eventually she settles for, "I saw Kim talking to that kid Mariana."

Franky raises her hands in fake innocence. "Hey, I didn't ask, she offered to help."

She precedes Liz's unavoidable objection. "So, how's the parole preparation going?"

Liz starts. "Good."

Franky leans in. Her ribs protest a little, a phantom of the old pain, but it doesn't do much apart from making her even more determined to settle the score. "Let me give you a piece of advice, Liz," she says gently, covering Liz's hand with her own. "Your parole hearing is in what, three weeks?" Liz nods mutely. "You're gonna be out of here before the end of the month, you know that, I know that, everyone knows that. Apart from that little slip you're pretty much a model prisoner. So how about you don't make any trouble while you're still here, huh? Wouldn't want to jeopardize those chances." She grins, shark-like. "Besides, I've got everything under control."

There's silence, a beat, two – then Liz nods again. Franky smacks her lips, satisfied, sits back in her chair and winks at Mariana. Looks like everything's going back to normal. She's getting sick of the infirmary, anyway, and some people need to learn their lesson. 

"Well. Great, then. _Bon apétit,_ ladies," she says cheerfully. Sex and intrigue: nothing better to whet the appetite. 

*

In hindsight, she should've expected it. She's having her shower – trying to, it's no good being pretty in those parts of the prison and you can't exactly hide a shiv anywhere when you're naked – when someone taps her on the shoulder. Mariana whips around, already rehearsing her threats in her head. Then she swallows them right back up. Kim laughs. 

"What do you want?"

"You know what I want. The guards don't come here. Listen, let's make this quick: tomorrow morning you'll talk the suppliers, they'll ask you for a name. You know what to do."

"Franky?"

"Yeah." She procures a small folded piece of paper, Mariana doesn't want to know where from, and closes Mariana's fingers on it. "Those are the numbers of the bags where the drugs are. Put them on the lowest shelf; if anyone tells you otherwise, tell them you're doing it for Franky. Should be enough to shut them up."

"And if it isn't?"

"You used to box, didn't you? Well, it's the same thing, except without the gloves." Her fingers close on Mariana's shoulder and it only feels half like a threat. "You'll do fine."

Mariana swallows. 

Kim steps closer, and for the first time since the beginning of the conversation Mariana stops the pallid scar running from her right knee to her bellybutton. She looks back up as soon as Kim spots her, blushing a little. 

Kim gives her a quirked smile, not unkind. "That's all you have to do for now. You don't touch the drugs, you don't talk about this to anyone, not even to me. You do your job and you shut your mouth. You learn those numbers and then you get rid of the paper, I don't care how you do it, flush it down the toilet, eat it, whatever. Franky will tell you for the rest, but we'll handle the distribution, don't worry your pretty head about that. All clear?"

Mariana nods. Belatedly, she remembers her bravado from the first days, the tough chick act she'd thought was her best defense between bars; but Kim's seen far more of her than anyone else here, there's no point trying to fool her now. 

Kim must see something on her face; she sighs. "Listen, it's not that bad. It's like what you did out there, except simpler, and less dangerous. Franky takes care of her own, okay? She won't let you down." _If you don't,_ Mariana hears, but Kim's eyes are calm, soothing.

Her wet hand slides on Mariana's cheek. "Don't fuck it up," she says in lieu of parting words. "Franky trusts you."

Mariana doesn't answer, her mind still on the scar, of all things. She's got her own set of cuts and bruises, but this seems at odds with who Kim is, soft and laughing and only sometimes dangerous. If she was asked Mariana would say she's the one who seems the most intact, out of all of them. Still, she's learning: don't believe what you hear, or what you see. 

"Where'd you get that?" she asks on impulse. "The scar."

Kim turns around again, her hair dripping with soap. She's kind of pretty, actually.

But – "Story for next time," she says, and after that there's nothing more to be gotten out of her. Mariana spends ten minutes rolling the numbers in her mind, learning them by heart; then she puts the piece of paper under the shower head and watches the ink run and splotch until there's no deciphering what it said. 

*

No one says the word 'happy' in a prison, except maybe the visitors who haven't been there often enough to know better. For one, happiness doesn't really have its place in a place like Wentworth, where the gray is overwhelming and riots break out on a weekly basis, of late; and even if someone found a reason to be, speaking the word would be bad luck, would be calling attention to the fact instead of protecting it in secrecy. 

So Franky doesn't say it. Maybe it's not even happiness, but it's close: being able to twist the key in Erica's lock and have the door open, the camera disconnected, her lies believed, lean over the desk, press her fingers against Erica's throat and watch her yield into the kiss. Besides, sex makes things easier. Franky wouldn't be half as close with Kim if they weren't fucking like rabbits – well, not as much, not anymore, though that's not a conversation Franky's exactly eager to have. 

They don't talk – usually their conversations are arguments, and besides, what would they talk about? There's the tutoring, or the prison, or Bea, but talking about those things means more lies and untruths and more hurting, and despite what some people might think Franky isn't actually masochistic. What if she wants to catch a break? She's getting a handle on things again, finally. She's allowed some fucking down time. The thought makes her chuckle. 

"What is it?" Erica asks. 

It's strange to see her like this, at any rate, and Franky didn't think she ever would: her hair untied, her shoulders bare and golden, almost relaxed; her eyelids heavy, the nape of her neck leant against the back of her chair.

"You have sex hair." She smirks. "Serious bedhead."

Erica smiles lazily, but fixes it nonetheless – or, well, tries to, but Franky isn't going to tell her that. She shifts closer to her so that they're almost embracing, and it's strange, good but strange. Even before jail Franky's never been the hugging type: fast and personal, yes, but not really intimate. A star-shooter, that's how she used to think of herself. She doesn't do that anymore. Think of herself. Maybe in one or two years, when her parole's coming up.

Erica tilts her chip up – there's something in her eyes just before they kiss, defiance maybe, like she isn't sure Franky will do what she wants her to do – and they kiss, deep and leisurely and with that ferocity Erica disguises as ambition the rest of the time. Her nails skim over the skin of Franky's side, under her tank top; Franky shivers.

After that they fall into a soft apathy, with the late afternoon sun laying over them its glazing, orange and fall yellow, gloating over their skin as though to soften them up. Franky's halfway to falling asleep – she shouldn't; they'll wonder where she is soon, and Erica has a job to do – when Erica's voice startles her out of her slumber. 

"What about Bea?" It's almost a whisper; if Franky didn't know better, hadn't seen the schemer in her too often, she would maybe think she's asking out of genuine concern. 

She doesn't open her eyes, but she smiles. Giving in to whatever this is doesn't mean she's giving up her poker faces. "Don't worry," she says as she finds the back of Erica's hand, blindly, with her thumb, presses down onto the big vein, not quite a caress, "I'll take care of it."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Erica says. 

Franky just shrugs. Erica might be the Governor, but the guards are right in their belligerent whispers when they think the women are too busy or too dumb to hear: she doesn't know what is to be here, not really. She doesn't understand that you have to let go of everything, your morals, your ethics, if you want to survive. Dreams are good, but you get cured once you get beat up enough.

Erica's probably not satisfied with the answer. She extricates herself from the chair and starts pulling her clothes on, quickly and efficiently. After adjusting her hair in the small affixed bathroom – she's never been in there, Franky realizes – she looks like nothing's happened, as cool and pristine as ever. There's a whole map of bruises and welts on her body that Franky knows exactly where to find, where to press to make Erica wince, then bite her lip at the sweet-sour pain.

"Guess that's my cue," she says after a while, when she's gotten her fill of watching Erica move around the office, adjusting her clothes and fixing the mess they made of the desk. Erica purses her lips.

She pulls her clothes on quickly, the key falling cool in her pocket, its weight reassuring. When she comes out from behind the desk, the muscles of Erica's back tense up, and she stills. The sight of her makes Franky want to touch again, touch and watch her finally melt, that coiled-up body unfold and come undone. She sticks her hands in her pockets, curls them into fists. 

She takes that step forward on instinct, because Erica is within arm's reach and Franky's never been good at checking her instincts, anyway. Her fingers slip over Erica's ears, twist in her hair as though they'd done it a thousand times – even though they haven't, not nearly –; Franky presses their foreheads together. Erica makes a startled noise at the sudden and surprising intimacy, but she doesn't move away. 

Honestly – honestly, Franky always thought it was bullshit, those stories about time stopping when you're with someone, but she's got to admit that anything could be going out there, any kind of apocalypses or last judgments, she wouldn't even notice. Erica's lips aren't sweet against hers, they taste of sex and sweat and surprise, doubt maybe. 

"You've got not idea how long I've wanted this," Franky says, her voice rough. 

Then she leaves. She can't trust herself not to say too much, if she stays. 

*

Later she'll wonder if she knew how much rage was stored up under the weariness, stacking up against her ribs in preparation for that day. Maybe she did: she was so ready, it can't have been a coincidence, can't have been that there wasn't some cluster of cells in her that knew this was going to happen and was prepared, had suited up and steeled itself, gathering its fury. 

She replays the scene in her mind: the long, indifferent days in the grey, doling out advice and promises of safety, staring off Franky on the other side of the yard, listening to words that come in one ear and out the other, surviving, just like everyone else, maybe better and maybe worse. 

Then this. It was Caroline, the new guard, with her dirty-blonde ponytail and her short dirty nails, and the day was hot and sticky, a last remnant of summer.

"Bea Smith? You're up. There's someone out there to see you."

Surprise washes over her like a dirty wave. She doesn't move from her spot, her eyes obscured by sunglasses; she could be sleeping. "No."

Caroline might be new, but she's as stupid and violent as the others. "Come along, Smith, you don't want any more trouble."

They said that to her, when she came back from her trial: you don't want any more trouble. Put all the chances on your side, Smith (the guards call her Smith; Jackson calls her Bea, or nothing; the inmates call her Red), looks like you're going to be here for a while. She didn't care then – she doesn't care now. 

Still, she goes, not by curiosity but because resisting would take strength she doesn't have. What does it matter where she sits, whose face she looks at while they talk and she doesn't hear? It doesn't matter. 

When she steps into the visitation room at first there's no one she knows. At the only table where someone's still waiting – the others are all paired up – sits a man who looks like he couldn't care less, his hat pulled low over his ears, a fag drooping between his lips. Bea doesn't know –

But then she sees it. She knows, from the moment her eyes meet his, that this is a trap, just like she recognizes Franky's wiry back facing him; she sees in the terror on his face that he's been trapped too, like he trapped Debbie before. Tough luck, Bea thinks just before she lunges at him, her heart hammering with a ferocity she didn't know she still possessed, and after that nothing matters, not Franky's traps and not his terrified face and not Bea's verdict ("Guilty"), only the fact that she attended her own daughter's funeral.

Franky laughs. "You go, Red," she says, sly. 

Brayden Holt's face is a smudge of red in her vision. Her first punch hits him in the eyebrow, blood spurts, thick and wet and spurring her on, and then his jaw, the bones breaking under her knuckles and Bea feels sick, sick to her stomach with all the rage she pours into her movements. When she was a kid she used to be meek and scared, used to let the older boys bully her and pull her ugly pigtails – when she was a kid she thought she would never hit anyone. Even as an adult, the idea of hitting Harry back was enough to chill her bones -- and look at her now. Life fucked her up. Like fucking fucked her up. 

If Bea – Red, that's what they call her; it's been weeks since she's heard her name and she's gotten the message loud and clear, good ole Bea Smith is no more – could look around her right now, she would see them standing and cheering her on, she would see the visitors shrunken against the wall and the guards barreling through the tight crowd to get at her. She would see Franky Doyle leaning against the wall, one hip cocked out, a smirk floating her lips. She would see Brayden crossing his arms over his face, trying to make himself too small to hurt, and begging. 

But she can't. She can't see anything, except her daughter's face the last time she visited, her absent rebelliousness, that face Bea should have decrypted as being adolescent love, but didn't. She hits and she hits until there's nothing solid to hit anymore, and then she hits again, kicks, scratches, spits, smears the blood over her thighs and goes back in for more. When someone's arms wrap around her middle she doesn't stop, her breath supply abruptly cut, remotely she hears herself screaming things. 

Murderer. You killed my daughter. Debbie. Murderer. Murderer. She could think up insults but that's all her brain has to offer, murderer, because there's nothing more heinous in the world. He should be in jail instead of her, but Bea's like all the others now, her faith in the justice system evaporated, transmuted into the long hopeless wait for death. 

Murderer. 

She doesn't stop hoping that he's dead for one second, while they take hold of her and twist her arms around her back and she writhes and kicks, the same questions in her mind, why, why did you kill her, she was the best the brightest the most beautiful little girl in the world and you took her from me --

A needle in the side of her neck. Bea stops screaming and lets herself fall backwards. She knows, suddenly, that this won't meant any rest for her, even if he's dead, and for a second she wants to cry but she doesn't. The blood on her hands is starting to scab, under her nails and in the ridges of her skin. Without opening her eyes, she can feel it all over her, the blood of her daughter's killer, in her neck and on her legs, even dripping from the ends of her hair. 

Red, she thinks before the darkness swallows her; that's what they call her. Well, at least now they have a reason.


	8. Chapter 8

Silence. 

That's all. Blood, and silence. It's only a handful of seconds, but to Franky it seems to last forever. Her eyes trace the movements of the crowd, Bea's silhouette, the guards around her: everything going as she planned, or at least as much as that's possible in here. You can't foresee chaos. There was one certain value in this plan, that Bea would go crazy when she saw Brayden, and she did. Now, silence.

Brayden is still prostrate on the floor, hunched over like a dog, bleeding from several spots on his face, but no one moves to help him – it's as though they were as shocked by this silence as she is, as though they'd frozen in place. It's just a few seconds, she knows that. It's just what it feels like. 

Eventually they get to him. When Franky turns around she sees Bea being dragged out of the room, unconscious, Doctor Patel still holding the needle near her throat, probably afraid that she's going to wake up and lunge at him even though that's not possible. Franky knows from experience that they prefer the reliable ones, the ones who never change, to people like Bea, liable to go off without warning. Four years ago a woman named Gertrude slit the throat of one of the guards and got as far as the deli down the street before they caught her. They've forgotten now, that kind of mindless violence happens far too often not to become routine, but they're kept the wariness. 

Sound returns; Franky shakes the horror and surprise off, watching with barely-concealed disdain as the frightened visitors all but flee the room. Only the prisoners are left, their faces bored, their eyes blank. That means no privileges and guards on edge, probably. Tough break. Franky catches Liz's eye on the other side of the room, her eyes wide and shocked. That girl is too smart for her own good. 

_Get over it_ , Franky mouths. If Liz sees it, she doesn't do anything to show it. Franky shakes her head, faintly irritated. It's not like she's accountable for this – and even if she were, she has good reasons. Besides, she's not sure if it makes any difference to Bea whether she's lording over the yard or shut off in the slot, to be perfectly honest. 

She sticks her hands in her pockets, registering a slight shaking that irritates her more than it should. She's been here for five years, for fuck's sake. She's used to that shit. She leans her hip against a table; absently, she wonders if Erica's somewhere looking at them on the monitor, one hand clasped over her mouth.

Probably not. Still – she ducks her head, just to be safe.

*

"This is unbelievable. How much do I need to pay you to have _one week_ without anyone getting assaulted? This was in the _visitors' room_ \- there were four of you there. And for God's sake, this is Bea Smith we're talking about."

Their eyes are blank. Leaning against the lockers, she could almost mistake them for prisoners, if it weren't for the uniforms. Even Vera, who used to be so annoying with her earnestness and barely-covered ambition. Even the fucking newbie. They're looking at her like they despise her as much as those women she watches on the monitors; the way their lips curl in disdain when they say her name, _The Governor_.

Eventually Fletch speaks; on behalf of all them, it seems. "She was out of control, and nothing indicated she would go off like that. She hasn't done anything herself in months; Simone and her cronies are doing all the dirty work for her."

They're not even pretending not to know what the prisoners are up to anymore. The system is transparent: the women with their elaborate schemes and wars, and the guards like indifferent, brutal ghosts, beating them into submission whenever they feel like it. It's funny, in a morbid sort of way – Channing told her how corrupt the prison world was. 

"Who let her meet Brayden, anyway?"

Fletch looks at her; you signed the order. She did. She doesn't remember it, but she did, she must've, all the requests come through her. There have been so many things... Mark. The keys on the table, Mark and Franky and Channing and two days ago she was holding a gun in one hand and Franky's head in the other, pushed down between her thighs... She's been having headaches every day for weeks now. 

One of the female guards, Heather, with her coarse skin and red hair, speaks up. "Can we go now?"

"No. I want to figure this out."

"This doesn't have anything to do with us," Fletch says. He means, _figure it out yourself_ , but she's still the boss. She's still the Governor. If that's all there is left of what she started this with, then – she's not a quitter, never been. In college she used to harrass professors to persuade them to let her audit their class. They didn't like her; the students did, because she was pretty and learned not to wear too much pastel in high school.

"Even if... I doubt Brayden came of his own free will. Someone must've threatened him, or lied to him about who he was meeting. Did you hear anything about that?" She knows better than to think they would come to her. Besides, it's how it works: you hear so many things in those corridors, some of them you just don't want to keep in your head. You have to keep the darkness from contaminating you. Erica knows that, or at least she knows that's what they think; too bad her hands are already black to the bone. 

But they just shrug. They didn't trust Meg, she realizes; they respected her, or feared her, there's not much difference in a place like this. But they don't fear her. They still think she's as naïve as the day she came in, the clueless lawyer with no idea how to handle a prison riot. She hasn't given them much reason to think otherwise. 

"Well," she says, her voice suddenly hard. "Find out."

They disperse, talking in low, vindictive voices. For a second Vera's eyes screw into hers, and Erica gets the impression that she's being given a warning. _You know what mobs can do._ Just that. Erica shudders against her will; she's not sure if it's from anger or fear. 

*

The new ones feel like they're stepping into a war. 

"This is bull," Mariana says in her droning, bored voice from Kim's side, where she's taken residence. 

Kim smiles – she's the one who does the cheering-up, usually – but it doesn't feel real. She can feel the tension too; they all can. With Bea in the slot everyone is jumpy, unsure who to obey. Simone's a brute, not a leader; and Franky's just not what she used to be. The scars are starting to fade, but it'll be a while before everyone forgets. It doesn't stop her from walking into the mess like she owns everyone and everything in it; the way she licks her lips always means trouble. 

Kim lays a hand on her arm. "What's going on?"

Franky crosses her arms behind her head. "It's good to be back," she grins.

Kim lets herself smile. "Where's Liz?"

"Don't know, don't care," Franky says with a shrug. 

Mariana looks up from her nails, interest flashing on her face. "Didn't she have that parole thing today?"

That wakes Boomer from her _Grey's Anatomy_ -induced slumber. "That's today? Fuck. She's getting out."

"She's getting out," Kim repeats. 

For a while no one talks. It doesn't happen that often, someone making it out; after a while you start thinking that prison's all that you are and all you're ever going to be. Besides -- no one gets second chances in Wentworth. It just doesn't happen. There it is, though: by the end of the month Liz is probably going to be getting a plastic bag and drive away, leave behind half a decade of her life without a thing to show for it. That's the thing about leaving - in the end they're all scared of it. What do you do, after? Most of them have been there for so long that their families have forgotten about them, neatly cut them out of photo albums and don't even bother sending a card for Christmas. In all the time Liz's been here, her husband and daughter have visited once; the daughter blanched, threw up in the corner of the room and never came back. You can't blame them, though. You can't really blame them. 

There's movement in the back; Old Jackie, who's been here longer than anybody else, though one knows what she's in for. It's probably for the best: that much time most likely means something gruesome. She opens a wrinkled eyelid, her tiny fists clenching and unclenching.

"She'll come back," she croaks out. "They always come back."

But even that can't dampen Franky's spirits; she grabs Kim by the neck and kisses her deeply, her face predatory. Kim lets out a noise of surprise, then melts into the kiss. In the end Boomer's the one to break them up, catcalling loudly.

"Even McDreamy and his missus don't get that dirty in public," she crows, palming at her crotch exaggeratedly.

The comment jerks Franky out of her daze. For a millisecond she looks almost guilty, but if there's one thing she's always been good at it's not letting anything show, and guilt is one of the more dangerous emotions in a place like Wentworth. In the musty darkness of the prison the women develop a dog's sense of smell: they sniff out weakness, and then they tear out your throat. Franky knows; she's done it more times she can count. 

She springs to her feet. Her gang follows her without hesitation. In the cell block everyone clears out as soon as they arrive, not threatened, exactly, but unsettled by the uncertainty that's going around. Now that Red's in the hole again, and it looks like she's not going to get out for a while, who's going to take her place? Franky's the best candidate, but the women don't trust her. Besides -- some of them say she's getting cosy with the authority. She's always been sweet on the Gov. 

Franky doesn't care. Franky never cares, about anything, at least unless she gets her hand trapped in the hot press or beaten within an inch of her life. And even then, she's scarily flippant, that kind of suicidal carelessness that comes with having to face adversity from day one, and never being allowed a minute's respite. She goes to the table and unearths her flask - a deal with the new guard, Caroline - from behind the cups. 

"What do you say we drink in Liz's honor, huh?" 

The irony of it hits her belatedly and she burst out laughing. After a moment's hesitation, the others join in. Franky distributes tiny pools of dark alcohol in plastic glasses. It's not exactly first-class, but at least it doesn't eat through the plastic like Liz's disgusting home brew. 

Kim is the first to raise her cup. She's always been freakishly loyal.

"To Liz," she says, her mouth still quirked. "May she make it out of this fucking hole."

"Amen," Mariana says.

Boomer almost crushes her cup when she toasts with Franky. She roars booming laughter, attracting the other women from the corridor. They pop their heads in, warily, their eyes narrowed to slivers. _What's the party?_ their bitter mouths ask, but no one in the gang answers, too wrapped up in their celebrations, until they eventually forget what they were celebrating. (It was never really about Liz, anyway. When a bitch is lucky enough to actually get out, the rule is you don't think about her. Old Jackie wasn't wrong: they always come back; but if you make it like they were never there in the first place, if you erase them from your mind completely, there's a tiny chance that they don't.)

*

The locker room has been empty for a while when he comes in. The summer's ending but it's still way too hot, and the room smells like food past its expiration date and feet. He slips past the door with uncharacteristic stealth. After a moment he crosses his arms and leans against one of the lockers, still making no sound.

It's only when she turns around that she sees him; she startles, almost jumps but not quite. She's a guard, after all, she's trained for this kind of thing. Of course she's also supposed to have heard him when he got in, but she's got the retort ready on the tip of the tongue, that they just don't pay her enough to still be alert after thirty fucking hours on her feet. She's starting to agree with the others - fucking Davidson, promising things to the prisoners and then making them do all the work. Typical. 

But he doesn't scold her. In fact, he doesn't say anything.

"Mister Channing," she says, her whole body tense. It's her break; she was going to eat a slice of that chocolate cake Fetch gave her the recipe to before he went and fucked everything up. But that's all shot to hell now. 

He smiles, entirely disingenuous. She's never liked him, but she dislikes Davidson more. "Miss Bennett," he says, oily. 

"If you're searching for the Governor, I'm afraid you've missed her," Vera says, hoping he'll go away. "I think she's -"

"I'm not searching for Miss Davidson," Channing interrupts her.

He looks like he expects her to hazard a guess, but she's too tired for mind games. She waits. She's good at that, waiting. That's all she ever does. 

He clicks his tongue, looking faintly annoyed. "I think we have something in common," he says. "From what I gather, you haven't been satisfied with the way the prison's been run since Miss Davidson was... promoted," he develops, the last word insinuated, like he knows how hard she wanted it. He probably does.

"That's a personal opinion, sir, and if I might say, I'm not the only one who thinks that around here." She's aware of how wrong her voice sounds, defensive, but she can't help it. "And it hasn't been hindering my job performance, I can assure you."

He waves her concerns aside. "That's not what I'm concerned about."

"It's not?"

A crease forms between his eyebrows. "I'm going to be blunt with you. I don't think Miss Davidson is doing a good job either, but my personal opinion isn't enough to get her fired. I need proof that she hasn't been fulfilling her duties, or even better, that she's been in infraction." Again, he wants her to guess; he knows something but he won't say it, he's scared for whatever reason. Too bad Vera's not the guessing type. "The commissioner's office needs facts to remove her from her position, and I can't get those facts without someone on the inside to keep me informed. I was hoping you could help with that."

Vera stills completely. She can feel a headache forming at the back of her head, drilling into her brain. She has never had so much shit happen to her since she's started working here, she thinks, but then again she's been working here for the better part of her adult life. It's a depressing thought. 

Channing arches a questioning eyebrow. Not a patient man; those types never are. "Well?" Or maybe he doesn't say it, she can't be sure. Either way, it's obvious. 

The thing is, Vera's not a traitor. But she's been behind Miss Davidson since the beginning, and what's that got her? Nothing. Not a fucking thing. If anything, Davidson has taken that as encouragement to fuck it up even more, and if Vera was prone to jumping to conclusions, which she isn't, she would say there's a good chance she's fucking Franky Doyle. She's not the first one who's wanted to, over the years a fair share of guards, both male and female, have expressed interest, Franky's got charisma or something, but she's the first actually dumb enough to do it. You can't stand behind someone like that forever. Besides. 

"What do I get out of it?"

Channing smiles from the side of his mouth like he's just caught a fish. Vera almost recoils. "I could put in a good word for you," he says. He digs a card out of his lapel pocket, and Vera feels an absurd and ill-timed urge to laugh. Where does he think he is, in a episode of _Mad Men_? "God knows we need dependable leadership."

Vera thinks: I won't fall into that trap twice. First it's Meg, and now... but before she even finishes the thought she knows she'll do it. Without realizing it Channing's stepped onto a goldmine: there's nothing worse than keeping still, than not moving, day after day, and sinking into that quicksand of motionlessness. Vera's seen it happen to her mother; it eats you up and then you're done for. Not her. She was on that track for a while but she's shaken herself out of it. Not her. She picks up the card and stuffs it into her pocket. 

"I'll see what I can do," she says, her face grim, but he reads into it, he smiles, reaches for a handshake. She doesn't want to but she does it; he's still her superior, after all, and she's never been one to defy hierarchy. 

*

Sure, it's weird: she's the Governor now, she doesn't have time for tutoring in her schedule, and giving lessons only to Franky is borderline reckless. Erica isn't reckless; at least she didn't used to be. Now she's not so sure. Anyway - the good thing about all the chaos is that something like that goes more or less unnoticed, and those who do notice usually aren't up to challenging Franky. Bea or not, she's still a force to be reckoned with. Erica thinks she'll probably always be. 

When she gets to the library Franky is balancing herself on the chair's hind legs, chewing on a pencil and smirking from the side of her mouth. "Gov," she says, huskily as though it were a term of endearment. It might be. Everything's inside out in here.

Erica ignores her greeting, forces herself not to smile. She nods at the pencil. "You shouldn't do that. You'll get lead poisoning."

"Will I?" Franky seems to consider it for a second, then she shrugs. "Worse things happen. At least it'd be an original way to go."

 _Don't joke about death,_ Erica almost says. It's something she gets antsy about: people have dropping like flies those last few months, and Franky's spent more time in the infirmary than she'd like. Then again, some of it was her fault. Besides - Franky's tough.

Franky finally sets her feet on the ground. She leans forward, arms crossed. Erica can't help dropping her eyes to her chest, instinctively, but she regrets it as soon as the smile widens on Franky's lips. You can never give her any ground, she learned that the hard way; she'll swallow you whole.

Erica sets the cups on the table. "I brought coffee," she says, to fill the silence before she says something she hadn't intended. 

Franky picks hers up, mercifully omitting the smart comment that Erica could swear is on the tip of her tongue. She's been bringing coffee since that first time, half out of politeness and half out of acquired habit, and Franky must know Erica would probably stop if she remarked on it again. It would be a shame, now that she's learned how to order it - black with one sugar, no milk, no fancy ingredients. In the outside world she's almost certain Franky would be addicted to over-sugary lattes - she needs glucose to keep up all the energy - but in here coffee's about keeping awake, and keeping awake is about survival. 

Franky knocks back the cup with a nod of thanks. Erica doesn't look at the way her throat moves when she gulps. Franky leans back on the chair. 

"I'm ready for my lesson," she says cheekily, licking her lips.

There is one thing that Erica learned out in the real world and that she never forgot: how to stand straight. How to fold her hands in her lap, how to cross her legs, how to hold everything inside, how to talk in measured thought-upon words that don't let anything transpire, with no messy edges, no bothersome leakage. Then Franky Doyle walks in and all that careful learning collapses on itself. Erica remembers Franky's hand over hers, wrapped around the gun, and heat curls in her stomach. The silence in the library suddenly thickens, tells her no one is there, turns into a swamp, every molecule of it clogging her throat a little more every time she breathes in. From the other side of the table, Franky smiles as though she knows everything about her.

Erica closes her eyes for a fraction of a second, enjoying the cool darkness behind her eyelids. Didn't she give in a while back? It still feels like she's fighting it every step of the way. She knows what Franky would ask -- _what are you afraid of?_ But she knows what she's afraid of. She's afraid she'll catch on fire when she touches her. She's afraid she'll wake up one day and not recognize herself. She's afraid loving Franky will eat her from the inside.

"Let's go," she says.

Franky raises an eyebrow, but she doesn't object when Erica take her hand and leads her away from the table. No one is looking at them, or at least no one Erica can see; and there's always blackmail, now that she's dipped a toe in that particular poisonous well - she might as well go the whole way. As soon as they pass one of the narrow alleys Erica tugs at Franky's sleeve hard enough so they collapse together, crashing against a shelf. Franky will never be able to tell Erica kissed her first; the thought clings to Erica's mind until the friction of Franky's sweatpants against the strip of bare flesh between her shirt and her skirt erases it like bleach.

Footsteps. Erica clamps a hand over Franky's mouth and presses her back into the shelf, covering every inch of Franky's body with her own. They're making too much noise. They should go back to Erica's office, but that would make it real, and besides -- Besides, Erica can't wait. Christ. What's next, admitting that she likes to do it with the threat of being caught any minute, the thrill of discovery sending shivers down her spine? She turns back to Franky. Bad idea. With her mouth covered, her eyes look like black holes. Erica tips forward, helplessly. 

"What are you -" Franky starts as soon as Erica releases her hold, her breath hot against Erica's palm. 

"Shut up."

Franky smiles, but for once she looks a little uncertain. Good for her. She needs it. Let her see what it feels like, crumbling from the inside. Erica shakes her head, once, to put her thoughts more or less back in place. Sex is a strategy in a place like this. She angles them away from the camera behind them, even though the shelf might be cutting into its view, she's not sure. She doesn't watch the tapes from the library out there: Franky's in the yard, in the mess or in her block. She studies in her cell. Erica ought to have stopped that - watching - now that she has the real thing, but the satisfaction she gets from it is sick and real, settling heavily at the pit of her stomach. It's a ritual of sorts - one of the things that haven't changed, and it keeps her grounded, sane. Besides, no amount of watching Franky will ever be enough to know what actually goes on in her head. Erica is under no illusions that just because having sex is a thing they apparently do now, Franky is going to start spilling all her secrets.

Franky latches onto her neck but Erica yanks her back, a hand curling in the hair at the back of her head. It must hurt, but Franky doesn't make a sound, doesn't wince; her eyes are molten when she lets herself be pushed against the shelf and kept there. If the camera does catch them it'll probably look like she's getting a stern lecture from her exemplary Governor. Erica smiles at the thought. 

"Don't move," she says, her fingers already busy deftly undoing the knot of Franky's sweatpants.

A flash of something, maybe fear, passes through Franky's eyes. Erica bites down on her lip. The urge to tip forward and kiss Franky again, forget everything and melt into that searing embrace, is there, beating like a second a heart in her chest, but instead she slips her fingers into Franky's pants, past her her shorts, skims them against Franky's thighs. Franky stiffens, then inhales violently. 

Erica looks her straight in the eyes, keeping the words jammed behind her teeth. _Do you have something to say?_ When she slides her fingers down Franky's wet, desperate even, and it's such an alien state for her that Erica feels full to bursting with satisfaction and something infinitely worse that looks alarmingly like the love she thought she'd lost when she'd stopped caring for Mark altogether. What's better - being a frigid bitch forever or falling in love with a felon? 

Yeah. She'll have to think on that; right now Franky's repressed moans might be tipping the scales. 

It's terrifying, is what it is, and as her fingers speed up and she watches Franky come undone in front of her she can't really believe it, because she's always been the one collapsing in this - whatever it is they have -; Franky has been angry and hurt but she's always been together, she knows who she is and she never seems to be ashamed of it. Erica doesn't need a degree in psychology to figure out that her childhood messed her up, but for a criminal she sometimes seems scarily well-adjusted. Well. In here, anyway. But now -- with this face, her eyes closed and her mouth hanging open, her lips red and bitten and her hair sticking to her cheek with sweat; now Erica wonders - was there moments she didn't see? Did Franky ever take her head in her hands and wonder what the fuck she was doing? Did she walk back to her cell after that first kiss and stagger and curse herself and punch the wall until her knuckles were bloody?

Without thinking she stretches the hand that's not burrowed into Franky's pants and presses her palm against Franky's feverish skin where her T-shirt has ridden up. Her nipples are rigid against the cloth but Erica doesn't slip her hand up. Instead she palms the curve of Franky's hip, almost tenderly, and curls the fingers of the other hand into her. Franky exhales like the air's been punched out of her. She looks more vulnerable than Erica's ever seen her, the rings under her eyes evident, her mouth slack, not smiling or scowling, for a change.

"Come on," Erica whispers. 

Franky's eyes flutter open. There's surprise in them.

Erica curls her fingers again and Franky's hand flies to her wrist, her nails digging into the flesh, one, two breathy moans and her body rocks forward but Erica keeps up her caress despite the remote pain in her arm, because even though Franky's nails are blunt there's brute force in her. How long since she's let someone touch her like that? Erica wonders and the heat that's been steadily pooling at the base of her stomach turns to a dense throbbing. Kim might have gone down on her but Erica doubts Franky let anyone take an inch of power from her since Bea's risen from Jacs's barely-made grave.

One last shiver and Franky's chin drops. It takes a second before she looks back up and smiles, washed-out, almost as if she didn't mean it. She doesn't look fucked-out as much as she looks defeated, but it's a strangely good look on her, and Erica understands two things: first, why Jacs was so eager to take her down; and second, why Franky's so careful never to let that look surface on her face, even when her hand been crushed and burned or when she's been beaten up half to death. Faces can kill, don't let anyone tell you the contrary. 

At last Erica lets the tide take her over; she leans forward, free-falling, and presses a strangely chaste kiss against Franky's mouth. She feels as though she's run a marathon: as she takes her hand out of Franky's sweatpants she realizes her wrist is aching, her back feels sore, and the back of her heels feels like it's slowly burning. Without thinking she slides her fingers into her mouth and Franky's eyes widen. Then she laughs. Erica joins in when she catches onto what she's doing; she wipes her fingers on Franky's pant leg. Then she presses their foreheads together, Franky's fingers ruining her careful curls, stroking behind her ear.

She feels empty, suddenly, the realization dumping on her like a ton of lead; like a blank slate. 

*

Sometimes Mariana feels like bashing her head against the wall. It's pathetic, sure, but it's true -- everyone seems like they're cool with the fact that they're in fucking jail and she cannot stop unrest from simmering in her bones, wired up. Which is bullshit, really. She stopped using months ago: weren't those symptoms supposed to go away? At least it felt good. This just feels miserable. 

It's not that she's not popular, exactly. Sure, she didn't choose the most well-liked group to hang around, but she's always liked a challenge and besides, for some reason she trusts Kim when she says Franky takes care of her own. Which just leaves the question of whether she is, yet. And the others tolerate her: she's pretty but she's spunky, too. Last time someone tried to get her to pick up the fucking soap she dealt a nice right hook, and she probably would've gotten her head smashed against the tile if Boomer and Franky and one or two others of Franky's minions hadn't been there to keep a fight from breaking out. So now they respect her, more or less. Well -- at least they seem to have gotten the message that her ass is off-limits.

Now she's locked up because fucking Pedro had a big cock and her mother decided abandoning her kids was the way to score brownie points with her new boyfriend. Bad decisions run in the family, apparently. Mariana wonders what's happened to her little sister in the foster system and realizes that she can't even remember her face. How many years has it been? Anger fills her esophagus; she wishes she was back in the kitchen so there were plates to smash or soup to spit in.

She shakes her head, sneaks a glance at Boomer, lounging listlessly next to her. Distract yourself, chica. It never ends well when she lets that rage take over, that's part of why she's here in the first place.

"So. How many years?"

Boomer looks over at her, faintly surprised, as though she hadn't really registered her existence. Mariana wonders what she was looking at. "What?"

"How many years do you have left?"

Boomer shrugs. "I dunno. Four, I think. Maybe more."

"You don't care?"

"Not really. I got TV in here, and a bed to sleep on every night, that's more than I ever did out there."

"But it's _jail_."

"You get used to it." She returns to staring vacantly into space for a few minutes, and Mariana thinks the conversation is over, but after a while she perks up again. "What are you doing here, anyway? Didn't Franky put you on kitchen duty or something? You taking care of business for her?"

"I guess. I'm the middleman or some shit. Pays for gum and cigarettes." Yeah. Hell will be frozen over before she admits she might respect Franky, a little. (And she likes Kim. Go figure. If she wasn't Franky's personal fucktoy she might even take a shot at it.)

Boomer smiles, distracted, like she knows exactly what's going on in Mariana's head. 

"What you looking at me for?" Mariana snaps.

She feels ridiculous as soon as she says it, and Boomer's barking laughter doesn't help. It's the street. You gotta be like a wire, ready to snap at anything, ready to jump at someone's throat before they jump at yours. It's how it works. Here... here it's like everyone's waiting for something, and Mariana doesn't know what it is. Sometimes she's afraid she'll miss the signal. Get crushed in the stampede. Well, she didn't say it wasn't stupid.

"Franky'll have your ass if you don't do the job she gave you, you know that right?"

Mariana rolls her eyes. "The delivery's tomorrow morning, chill. Why are you all so strung out about that chick, anyway?"

The reaction is automatic, and it would be funny if it weren't slightly terrifying; Boomer bares her teeth, quietly menacing. Mariana holds her hands up. "Fine, whatever, forget I asked."

Bommer settles down, burying deeper in the ratty couch. Her eyes close slowly, reduced to slivers, and it's only later, when Mariana thinks she's sleeping, that she answers in a deep, rumbly voice, "Franky's family."

Well. Clearly they're all soft in the head. Mariana grabs the last piece of gum in her sweater pocket and heads back to the kitchen. She can't shake the feeling, though, that there's something brewing, some sort of war, that no one will tell her about. It makes her antsy. She blows a perfect bubble and snaps it, but it only makes her feel slightly better.

*

It's probably conspicuous. It has to be. After all, this is a place where every movement is recorded, restricted, corralled by an array of rules. Hand food to the prisoner only through the slot. Don't reach through the bars. No fighting.

So this - her finger on Erica's pulse point, rising ever so slightly with each heartbeat, hand loosely encircling her wrist - has to be conspicuous. She should stop. She should focus. They have work to do. But Franky always feels like sleeping after sex, and she knows better than to drop her guard but it feels like the afternoon is suspended in golden dust coming from the high-up window. She yawns. 

Erica frowns. "Franky," she says. 

Franky rolls her eyes, but she surrenders - twice in a day, has to be a new record. Truth is, it feels good, when control isn't a tight knot in your chest but outside of your grasp, in the hands of someone you trust. She looks at Erica's face, trying to find signals under the exhaustion. This is absurd. She's always been the impulsive one, the crazy one, the one who backed Erica into a corner in her office and kissed her, but now... now Erica's given in.

"How about Bea?" The words cut through her daze. 

"What about her?"

Erica shakes her head. "I know there was tension between the two of you."

"Well," Franky shrugs, "we can make a deal if you want, but it'll take a lot more than coffee to get all my secrets out of me." She waggles her eyebrows suggestively and watches as Erica tries to keep from smiling. Franky wonders if she knows how untrue that is, how little it would take for Franky to actually spill everything. Better that she doesn't. 

"Besides," she says, swept in the moment, "that's taken care of." 

All trace of mirth drops from Erica's face. It's impressive, really, the speed with which her face turns into a mask of steel. "What?"

Franky doesn't say anything. She crosses her arms over her chest. 

"I knew it," Erica says with tight, controlled fury, violently collecting the books spread over the table, "I knew this was a mistake. You're a criminal." She starts to stand up, but at the last minute she sits back down, leans in. It's sick, but suddenly Franky remembers why she wanted to break her in the first place. It's the way she holds her head, the iron in her jaw and that vague, paternalizing disgust. She should learn to control her face better. "You know what, Franky? I tried to help you. I tried to help all of you, every day. Meg Jackson would have thrown you all to the wolves but _I_ stepped in, _I_ tried to make it better. If I wasn't you there you would all be under Jacs's thumb right now."

Franky scoffs.

"Is that all you have to say?"

Franky feels her mouth opening, the words threatening to slip out: I have more to say. Your hands are dirty too, remember? But Erica must be rubbing off on her, or maybe the straw's finally broken her back and she's learned when to keep her mouth shut, because she picks up her book and raises her chin towards the clock, nonchalant. That's what a poker face is; she feels like every fiber of her body is coiled, burning, but she knows, she _knows_ what she looks like, one hip cocked, chin raised, ready to strut out of the room and leave Erica stew in her juices again. That's what she's good at, right? Never a good idea to stir the quid pro quo, they should know that better than anyone. 

"Hour's up," she says, her voice a monotone. "I'm on kitchen duty." 

She's not; not that Erica knows that. But she won't let go, she won't fucking let go and Franky regrets, not for the first time, that she ever came here in the first place, with her high heels and idealistic ideas and the way she has of looking at Franky like she's worth something. No, she should be used to this shit. It's either they disappoint, or you're the disappointment. 

She catches up with Franky in the corridor, which is thankfully empty - everyone must be at lunch. Small mercies. She plants herself in front of Franky, barring the way, her entire body made of concrete. 

"You're the one who made Brayden come here, aren't you? You _planned_ this whole thing. You knew that Bea wouldn't be able to bear being in the same room with him."

Franky holds her stare. "So what if I did?"

Erica's voice drops. "I thought you were better than this."

"Really? What gave you that impression? Is it something I actually did, or were you just trying to convince yourself you weren't fucking, I don't know, a _criminal_? Because I gotta tell you Erica, even for you that's pretty extreme denial." She spreads her arms, gesturing to the sea of gray that's surrounding them. "Look where we are. This isn't fucking Candyland. You sit there in your office all high and mighty but there are things actually happening here. People get hurt. I -"

"I am handling it. I'm the Governor, remember?"

This time Franky can't help but laugh. "Oh, are you? What do you want, a fucking medal? Look, Erica, this isn't one of your law classes, this isn't practice. You're not going to reform anyone here. In fact, it would be great if you would stop trying and keep people from getting killed instead. That would be helpful."

If stares could kill... well. "Any other advice?"

"Sure. Why don't you make up your fine? You want to fuck me? That's fine. You want me to fuck you? Sure. I'd be happy to. But I'm not fucking _Mark_. I'm not going to lick your boots just because you ask. I have people to take care of, people who are counting on me, and until they're safe I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. It worked before you were here, it's working --"

"Really? Because I thought you spent half of last month in the infirmary."

Franky flinches. "I guess prison isn't all rainbows and bunnies. What a shocker."

Franky only registers where they are when her back hits the wall and she starts forward. Her throat feels raw, body tilted in a fighting stance on instinct. In front of her Erica still has her lines cross and her mouth is a red angry slash. Anger is attractive on her but Franky's usually so good at keeping her cool. If only she didn't fall for the wrong people -- but then, bad decision-making has always been a dominant point of her personality.

"This was a mistake," Erica repeats. Her eyes change color when she's angry, get darker, physically stormier. Franky hates herself for noticing. She laughs derisively. 

"Really? Running away, how original. Guess I'll just wait until you jump me again, _Miss Davidson_."

"Don't flatter yourself."

That - that is her comfort zone. That's what Erica never expects, even though she should: Franky walking towards her like a panther, slowly, giving her the time to slip away and smirking when she doesn't. She licks her lips. Her thumb on Erica's bottom lip, rough, nail driving into the plump flesh and she is angry, she is, she shouldn't let it get it to her but there she is. Erica Davidson. She should've known from the start.

Like a bird of prey she dives suddenly and brusquely but Erica doesn't jerk away and then they're kissing, the kind of heavy and violent, bruising kiss they had the first few times, until two days ago, actually, until that absurd truce. A truce between prisoner and jailer? Come on. Franky sinks her teeth into Erica's lip, laves her tongue over the mark purely for the satisfaction of hearing Erica keening and feeling the sharp tang of that solitary drop of blood. She's probably never been in a real fight.

Eventually she pulls away. She doesn't smile. She shrugs, her shoulders tight; as she looks at Erica's slack mouth and furrowed brows she remembers everything that's wrong with the situation, all the things she hates about her. 

"Guess that did nothing for you, either, right?"

Then she walks away. 

*

The afternoon follows its own track out of habit, weightless – Erica follows with it, ignoring the glares the guards send her way when they think she isn't looking. It's only when it starts physically pressing into her skin, the mirror of the bruises Franky left in the unseen corners of her body, that she shuts herself up in her office. That's the nice thing about bureaucracy: there's never a shortage of paperwork to go through, of forms to fill, of reports to write. Fuck Franky. She doesn't know what it takes to run a place like this, the cogs and wheels of it. Her judgment means nothing. 

Still: it's a running theme in her new life that every time she tries to rid herself of Franky her face is everywhere, her name pops up in all the conversations, the outline of her body sharp and relentless on every screen. Erica tries not to look as she kisses Kim with renewed viguor, as though she was trying to catch her soul through her mouth. She pretends that brutality doesn't make her squirm in her chair – worse than that, that it's only part of what links her to Franky. Links can be unliked; after all, Wentworth specializes in the breaking of bonds, the varied forms of aloneness. 

It takes three sets of knocks, each time a little more determined, to pull her out of her daze. Erica clears her throat, rearranges her position. Knees crossed, hair in that tight bun. Her fancy shoes in the desolated yard where what attracted Franky's eye in the first place. It was a stupid idea; you don't wear shiny things in a place where everyone is like magpies, craving glitter and fake gold.

"Come in."

Vera slips through the door, her mouth fixed in that ever-present frown. Her constant disapproval sets Erica's teeth on edge, perhaps more than the outspoken disagreement of the other guards. 

"What is it?"

Vera walks to the desk and stands rigidly in front of it. Her skin is a greyish tint. Distantly, Erica wonders what she would come up with if she reached inside her and closed her fist. Dust? 

"Is this not a good time?" she asks.

Erica shakes her head as though to drive off a fly. "Of course it is. Please sit down."

Vera doesn't. She stays standing, her hands joined at her back – it's a slightly ridiculous position, as though she were in the military. 

She keeps her eyes upfront, goes straight to the point. "We've asked the prisoners, and the general sentiment is that Franky Doyle is trying to get her old turf back. A lot of the women are starting to think that Bea has gone insane," her mouth twists, _they're not the only ones_ , "and apparently Franky was counting on Bea going off when she saw Brayden Holt."

She waits. Meanly, Erica thinks of her as a dog, waiting to be thrown a bone, given a medal. She tries to school her face not to let it show that she already knows, has turned the whole story over and over in her head and is tired of it, honestly. It doesn't work. Vera sees that she knew, and Erica can't help thinking about Channing, his face when he saw her and Franky, though it's not like that with Vera, she's not smart enough to find out and even if she were she's loyal, to a fault. 

"Franky," Erica says. It feels cheap, now, pretending, but she'll run with it. She sighs. "I guess I should've known she wasn't going to take it lying down."

Vera nods, fingering something in her pocket. Erica reclines in her chair. 

"Do you think this is over, or does she have something else up her sleeve? Are the women with her?"

"I don't think so," Vera says. "Not completely. She might be preparing something, she's taken that new girl, Mariana Ruiz, under her wing. It might have something to do with that."

Erica makes a note on the pad in front of her, the name of the girl. She doesn't recognize it, doesn't remember her at all, even though she must have seen her and talked to her at least once since she arrived. That thing with Franky is eating everything inside her, her sleep and her attention and her firmness, her strength. It's noxious.

"Good," she says, "thank you. I appreciate the effort."

Vera gives a stiff nod. For an instant they stand face to face, Erica sitting and Vera standing, and it looks almost as if Vera is trying to tell her something, to transmit some sort of message not out of compassion but out of a blend of pity and sense of duty; but it fades from her face and she heads for the door belatedly, shutting it cleanly behind her. 

Erica lets out a breath. She rests her head on her palm for a second; she'd never thought when she'd gotten this job that it would be remotely as exhausting as it's proven to be. Still – she's here, now, isn't she? And as much as she wants to, she's not leaving. She can't. 

*

Franky does things alone. It's a trademark: she has her crew, her family, people ready to protect her with brute force against anything, and they'd follow her through fire; but she does things alone. She talks; she has that swagger and that smile people respond to, even before. Her women follow a few paces behind, ready to intervene – sometimes she has her arm looped over Kim's shoulder, engulfing her in her shadow – but that's all.

"Simone."

Simone bares her teeth. Franky watches her body coil in a fighting stance: her knees go in, her shoulders hunch, she thrusts her jaw forward. Without someone to be the queen to her henchwoman she's nothing but an animal; useful, sure, but an animal nonetheless. 

"Relax, I'm not here for payback." She leans against the wall. "Though I should, really."

"What do you want?"

Franky smiles. She can show teeth, too. "Straight to the point, that's my girl. I've always liked that about you, you know."

Simone takes a step forward, but she's not quick or menacing enough that Franky doesn't notice the glance she darts at the corridor, waiting for someone who owes her something to pass by, help her. Oh, this is going to be easy. 

"There's no reason to be nervous. I just wanted to ask – how's single life treating you?"

"Why? You haven't got enough pussy to eat?"

"I'm doing fine, nice of you to worry. But no. I was just thinking – you've had a few tough breaks lately. First Jacs crapping and then Red who turns out to be..." she makes a screwing movement with her finger by the side of her head. She'd been holding this side of herself back, for lack of opportunity and because of Erica, who gets spooked so easily; but she would be lying if she said she hadn't missed it.

"I'm fine."

Franky rocks back on her heels, her arms mockingly akimbo; enjoying the feeling. "I can see that. You're real popular these days."

"What do you want?"

"You're right, we don't have all day. As much as I'd like to rub it in," Simone starts forward – with a look Franky reminds her, _not a good idea_ , "I've got a proposition for you. I think we can help each other out."

Simone's eyes light up – she's not stupid, she knows a lucky break when she sees it. Something jubilant jumps in Franky's chest and she can't help thinking, _finally_. 

*

Ten minutes – ten minutes and the day is over. In ten minutes she'll pick up her bag, her files, her car keys and she'll drive back to her cold house, that big impersonal house no one forced her to leave. In fact, Mark moved out without noise; they fought for about a week but after that he seemed to just give up, suddenly, as though he had figured out she wasn't worth the trouble. Sure, it's selfish of her to expect him to be heartbroken, to beg to get her back. She was never really invested in what he wanted for them: the suburbs and the house and the bohemian life with two point five kids. But –

Knocking. No; it's too late for people to want things, unless something happened, a fight? Despite herself a wave of nausea breaks in her oesophagus, what about Franky, is she OK, she can't be hurt again. Fuck. 

"Come in."

The first thing she thinks when she sees him is: he has a key. Then she remembers: no, he gave the key to Franky and she must still have it, hidden somewhere in her cell, in fact she had forgotten but she could get into the office at any time, and Erica isn't even sure she would mind. 

"Channing." She tries not to let the surprise transpire, but it's late and she's done too much hiding today; she's not sure how well it's working. She thought she'd gotten rid of him, once and for all. One less thing to worry about. Apparently not. 

He rakes a hand through his hair, and she can see in his smile, oily and self-satisfied, that something is about to go wrong. "Don't worry, I won't take up your time. You should pack your things up. I'm sorry," he says, sounding anything up, "we're going to have to let you go."

He, too, closes the door softly, without vindication. Erica remembers Vera and her unblinking eyes, her empty expression – the way she'd seemed to want to say something for a second, warn her.


	9. Chapter 9

"I beg your pardon?"

Erica could do with never seeing that smile again. In fact, right now she could do with never seeing Channing again, full stop.

"Don't play dumb, Erica." Her lip curls in disgust as her name slides out of his lips. "You heard me. Several employees have expressed dissatisfaction with your work and there have been allegations of misconduct. Didn't I tell you nothing good would come of antagonizing me?"

 _Not in those words,_ Erica thinks viciously, but she doesn't say it. Unlike some people, she knows how to hold her tongue. This train of thought doesn't lead anywhere good, though. Franky's caused her enough trouble already. 

"I don't know what you think you have on me, but I'm not leaving. If you try to fire me I will sue you, and you will lose." Unthinkingly, her fingers trail to the drawer at her right, that gun that had scared so bad the last time. Her hand feels like it's buzzing, an itch starting at the center of her palm. "Did you know I trained to be a lawyer?"

"And never made it to private practice," Channing says with a twisted sneer. "I'm not trying to be cruel here, Erica. This is going to go smoothly. You'll take a leave of absence for a few weeks," Erica hears the poison in his voice, remembers saying the same words, that same measured tone, and – "and then you'll give your resignation. You don't feel like you've stepped up to the plate and you're truly, truly sorry. But someone will do a better job than you."

"You mean, someone will be your lackey? Have you chosen who already?" In her head, she browses the candidates at the same time at her possibilities: what does he have on her, really?

"I know what you're thinking," Channing says, smarmy and smug, "do I really have cause to fire you? Well," he links his hands over his stomach, looking unbearably pleased with himself, "I do. It seems you've made quite a few enemies within your own staff while you were cosying up to the scum. And they haven't failed to notice just how… intimate you and Miss Doyle have gotten."

It's so absurd, hearing him say 'Miss Doyle', that Erica would laugh if she weren't too busy panicking inwardly. It swells in her stomach, roiling, suffocating - reminds her of that time Mark proposed, trapped her with a bended knee in a fancy restaurant.

"The only thing for you to do now," Channing says, sitting down now even though she hasn't offered, crossing his legs at the ankle, "is to accept this gratefully."

Erica swallows. For a second she considers shooting him in the head, right in the middle of his forehead, how satisfying that would be. Instead she asks, "Who's going to be replacing me, while I'm… on leave?"

"Not that that's any of your concern," Erica barely represses the urge to snort at that, "but I'm thinking of appointing Vera Bennett. She's no Meg Jackson, but she'll do while we're searching for a suitable replacement."

"Right," Erica says, because there's really nothing else to say. She wonders about the look in Vera's eyes, if that blank solicitude was real: a vague warning at the back of her eyes, like the knee-jerk instinct to tell someone to run because you know what's coming.

She looks at the corner of the room behind Channing, the red corner where Franky pressed her against the wall and kissed her for the first time. Maybe she was right after all; maybe they're not that different. All they ever think about is coming back to this place. 

* 

It wasn't that long ago that the flashes were blinking at the gates, the prison illuminated with bolts of reduced lightning, half-yelled questions, _What are you going to do about the increased crime rates?_ and _Has an investigation been opened for the murder of Meg Jackson?_ Erica Davidson, stern but radiant, the unexpectedly elegant new Governor of Wentworth Prison, had bypassed the press, only giving over her shoulder the promise of a short press conference that same afternoon as she headed into work, to change the world, or so she thought. 

Now no-one wants her opinion. There are no cameras as she steps out, ushered out a backdoor, no ceremony, just Channing grinning as he watches her haul her cardboard box into the boot her car. The prisoners only got a short notice over the speakers, "Vera Bennett is the new Governor." The rest they're seeing now, as they huddle around the TV. Channing, oily and diplomatic; and in the background Vera's unspeaking silhouette. 

"Miss Davidson is going to be stepping away from the facility for personal reasons that I can't disclose," Channing smiles into the camera. "But I'm confident that Miss Bennett -" Vera takes a step forward, flashing a lacklustre grin at the camera, "will fulfil her duties with competence and hard work. Who knows? Maybe she'll even do a better job than Miss Davidson, and we'll be forced to keep her." Polite laughter from the journalists. 

Franky tears her eyes from the TV. "This is bullshit," she says. 

Boomer rests back on her chair. "Bennett's okay, though," she says slowly. "I mean, Davidson was a hardass, right?"

"Bennett's a fucking puppet, Boomer," Franky hisses. "At least with Erica -"

"Well, not all of us had a crush on her, either," Mariana says from her place on the arm of the couch. When Franky glares at her she snorts, "Oh, sorry, was that supposed to be a secret? Guess you shouldn't have made it that fucking obvious, then."

She barely has time to blink before Franky is on her, hand like a vice around her throat, thumb pressing down on her carotid. Mariana struggles to breathe. "Don't forget who you're talking to, _chica_. It's great that the kitchen people like you, but I made you. I can replace you."

"F – fuck," Mariana croaks as Franky releases her. She spits on the ground. "What the fuck?"

She glances at Kim but she only shrugs, as if to say, _you know the rules_. Which – she does. Doesn't mean that shit isn't getting fucking old. 

Though Franky is right, at least that's one thing: they like her in the kitchen now, they eat in the palm of her fucking hand and getting contraband into the prison is ridiculously easy that way. Even the supplies seems kinda taken with her. Not to mention she's been on best behaviour; she could very well have stored some goodies away for herself, but if that leads to getting her head in the press she'll survive through the cold turkey, no matter how much it sucks. 

Liz says, to no-one in particular, "She's coming back, you know. To help me prepapre for my parole."

Franky's head jerks towards her. Sometimes they forget she's here, Liz, these days, because the chance of parole means making yourself as invisible as possible – one offence, one wrong look at the guards and it's another five years in here. Now that they don't all think Liz's gonna come back, but... you know. Give it a chance, and all that. 

"So what?"

Liz gives her a look, _you know what_. It was annoying at the beginning, the way she plays the mom for everyone as though she isn't as fucked-up as the rest of them, as though she has any right to give them those little pitying glances and touches on the back; now it's making Franky want to put someone's head through the wall. 

"How about you mind your own business, huh? Heard you got a lot on your plate these days," she cocks her head, vicious, "and I would hate for that parole to go badly."

It's not a threat, really; Mariana's gotten to know Franky and subtle isn't really her style. If she wants to threaten you she'll get in your face and talk about losing a limb you'd really like to hold onto, and she can do it, they all know she can do it. With no Bea in her way her reign is undisputed, and nothing's gone pear-shaped in the last couple of weeks so the women have accepted it, kind of. (Truth is, they all know how precarious it is. There's not a lot of things to hold onto in here, but memory's one of them. They bear a fucking grudge, they really do.)

"What's going on with you, anyway?" Kim asks, resting her back against Mariana's legs. Mariana doesn't knee her away. "You've been pissy for the last week."

Franky leers. "Maybe it's that time of the month," she says, in a tone that closes all further discussion. Kim shrugs, tense. For a moment it seems like she's going to do what she usually does, rise up on her feet and loop her arms around Franky's neck, kiss the testiness out of her, but she doesn't.

*

Funny, how there are some things you don't realize you really wanted until you lose them.

Wait, no. No, that's wrong: Erica always wanted that job. She fought for that job. She fought for that job and she fought against Franky; the point being, she fought. She knows what she's lost. It doesn't fit in a cardboard box, if that's what you're asking: what's in there is a stapler that once left a bruise on her hand when she cleared the desk for Franky to haul her onto, her gun, her security pass and a plant Mark had given her even though she hadn't wanted to take care of it, hadn't known how. She'd had to find out, though; Mark had said it was good for her, a little vitality among the felons and the corruption. It's Liz who told her that plants give off carbon dioxide at night – poison. Fitting, Erica had thought, and from then on, with her naked ring finger, she'd liked the ficus a little more. 

But that's not the story. The story is Erica walking to her car in the vague chill of the beginning of spring and not taking a minute to think, to rest her head, to consider giving up and moving on: the story is Erica walking to her car and thinking, how am I going to get it back? She will. There's no question about that. Franky will help her, if she has to. It doesn't matter how mad she is.

Franky; it stings, leaving her like that. Not that she's leaving, really, but she can imagine Franky in front of the unit TV – because she's seen it so many times on the surveillance cameras, the way she moves, feline and ruthless and confident, the curve of her back and her grin and the way she runs her tongue on her lips when she's angry or amused or aroused –, huddled with the others, her knuckles white, fucking Kim to pretend she doesn't care. Erica used to do that, too: get home and fuck Mark to make like it wasn't a big deal, wanting for herself something that spectacularly wrong. Not like it worked, either way. 

When she gets home the house is cold and feels unlived in, and for the first time since she left Wentworth (her files are still in her office, she thinks jealously, irritated) she feels the crushing disappointment that was supposed to dump on her when Channing, that bastard, smiled his smug smile and told her she was fired. He must have enjoyed that – at least as much as she enjoyed pointing a gun to his head. 

She sits at the bar and pours herself a glass of white wine. The fridge is empty; most of these days now she eats in the office, has slept there a few times too, even though you couldn't tell from the way she's always so well put together. But it's part of the job. (Once or twice Franky ate there with her, greasy take-out that Erica picked up and tried to keep the secretary from seeing. But they never eat much. Franky looks at her the way Erica looks at a burger after a long day, and Erica didn't use to think she was easy, but she is. For Franky, she is.)

A cold wave of something – fear, confidence – settles on her: Erica Davidson, she thinks, and for a second she can't remember what it means. The house is still littered with the photographs she and Mark had lovingly disseminated around the rooms. She threw out the most obvious ones of the two of them, vacation photos where they stand embraced like a couple in an ad, the one on the mantepliece and the ones in the bedroom, the one in the living-room, too, but there are still dozens of others: Erica surrounded by her family, mother and father and the dog, back at their house; Erica as a kid, smiling minus a tooth; Erica at college, with Lisa and Greg and fucking Kloe, who she always hated; Erica on the first day of this job. Does she look younger? She does. 

It's not like she didn't know that she's changed, really; you'd have to be stupid and Erica is far from stupid, as her salary and her college career - _summa cum laude_ \- will attest. How long since she talked to Lisa, or Greg? Well, you lose touch sometimes. (Not to mention that you've been busy screwing a convicted felon, a pernicious little voice at the back of her mind says.)

She does it without thinking about it, in the end. It rings for a long time, so long that she thinks he isn't going to answer. 

"What do you want," he says, wary.

What _does_ she want? It sounds like something Franky would say, with her unforgiving eyes and the way she makes it seem like there is only ever one good answer. Suddenly she's not so sure. 

She clears her throat. "I just... wanted to check on you. How have you been?"

"You mean, since you broke off our engagement without any good fucking reason? I've been great." He laughs, lacklustre. 

"Mark..."

"Why are you calling, anyway? I'm assuming you don't want to get back together, or, you know, explain." A beat. "Are you – are you trying to make yourself feel better about something?"

"I'm not," Erica says, at the same time as she realizes she is. Still – "I just wanted to talk to you."

"Really? I don't believe you," he spits. He was never that cruel when they were together. She's not someone who spoils people, though; or at least she didn't used to be. She used to look at the women in Wentworth, at Franky and think about the trail of broken things they'd left behind, used to be grateful that she wasn't like that. "You know what I think, Erica? I think you're selfish. You've always been selfish. It was fine when we were engaged, but now I don't care. Figure your own problems out."

The line clicks. Well, Erica thinks, dry, that went well. 

She looks around her: her bag on the counter, her keys on the door, the wide whiteness of that house she never really liked but can't be bothered to re-decorate, the cardboard box with its ficus leaves sticking out. Maybe she could have left the prison a few months ago, when it would've been smart, before she got too embroiled in the machinations and the petty wars of corruption and greed, before she stuck her hand down Franky's pants in the library. Now, though, there's only one thing to do, and that's go back. 

They say you can never escape, once you put a foot in that place – Erica's always thought that was only for the prisoners, but maybe she was wrong.

*

The only way Franky sleeps these days is with three inches of hard steel between her and the rest of the world. Even that's not enough, sometimes – the memory of fucking Simone and her cronies attacking her at night and Franky being forced to take it, lie there like a bitch and get the fuck beaten out of her – so she just lies awake. Mariana gets her drugs when she asks for them, is finally learning to keep her mouth shut.

At night, when she can't sleep, Franky hedges her bets. Bea's been put away; that's a good thing, and trade is booming, the healthy rhythm of bartering now that Vera's in charge, watching over them with her dead cow eyes, unseeing. Maybe she's blind, or maybe she doesn't care – probably the second one – but it's not like Franky gives a shit either way. At least with Erica gone she doesn't have to bother with all that morality bullshit.

(There's the rest, of course. There's the way she sleeps even less with Erica gone, the way she can imagine her reaction to whatever shit got pulled on her - Franky's going to find out -, her face ashen and furious, the way prison's corrupted her but Franky can't tell if it – if she – has got its claws deep enough to reel Erica back in. The way Erica was an ally, whatever else she was, a do-gooder but someone who listened, who got Franky and her cell block out of a few scrapes. Vera won't do anything. It's fine, though. They've been fending for themselves for a long time.)

And now Liz is leaving, and that'll be one less person to talk her down when she's ready to tear someone's throat out, one less quiet voice for peace. Liz never belonged here – except she does, they all do, because they found her guzzling down that disgusting home brew in the fucking broom closet last time she got parole – but her leaving makes it a little harder, and – well, shit.

At least Doreen is still here. She's nothing but a shadow of who she was a year ago, sure, her kid all but gone and guilt pressing down onto her shoulders, unsure and skittish and scared, her loyalties confused and her best friend leaving. But she's alive, and that's all you can ask for around here – you don't hear Franky complaining, do you? She arches her eyebrows when Doreen sidles up to her at the unit table, her fists closed at her hips like she's trying to keep from doing something, reaching out maybe. 

"What do you want?"

"I'm on your side," Doreen says in a rush, eyes jumping, "you know that right?"

Franky can't help a smirk. She doesn't like to make things easy, for anyone, and especially not now. She's feeling pissed off. Tough break, little girl. "You are, are you?"

Doreen licks her lips. "Yeah. Look, I wanna tell you something."

Franky cocks her head, automatic. "Really."

"Jacs -"

Franky barks laughter. When she stands she almost towers over Doreen, strong and mean. "You want to talk about Jacs now? I think you don't remember the rules, Dor: when someone's gone here we don't talk about it." Her eyes darken; there's been something collecting there the last few weeks, as though to say, _I'm back_. "Unless it's a message from your old friend Red, that is?"

"No – no, it's – something else." There's something combative about her all of a sudden, like she's regaining the strength she used to have - mom strength, Franky thinks -, but it melts out of her as soon as it appears. "It's nothing like that. Look, you remember how Jacs was before Bea – before she died?"

"A fucking pain in my ass," Franky says. "Why?"

"Someone was helping her."

Franky doesn't show her surprise. If all this bullshit taught her one thing, it's to have a good poker face. When she gets out she'll make a fucking fortune in the casinos. "Way to manage the suspense," she snarks.

Doreen fiddles with the hem of her T-shirt, and Franky feels the urge to tell her to stop, to twist her wrist and hold it away from her body, hurt her, make her realize. Look at yourself, she wants to say, but she doesn't. Doreen deserves what she got. They all do, in one way or another. 

"It's Vera," Doreen says after a while, her voice so soft Franky wouldn't have heard if she weren't listening for it. "Vera was helping Jacs. I don't know what Jacs had on her, or if Vera's just… anyway. I thought you'd want to know."

Franky can't help it; she tilts her head back, and she laughs.

*

Okay, first off, everyone has to know one thing: Mariana's not a dyke. She likes her dick hard and attached to a man, thank you very much. It's just sometimes... well, needs must, right? The way she sees it, she hasn't been doing any blow almost since she's been here and sex is a good way to get people to do what you want. There's nothing wrong with getting off. Sure, her mama wouldn't approve, but then her mama wasn't exactly thrilled when she got caught by the police, either, so it all balances, kinda. 

And if Mariana's going to fuck a chick, she knows who she wants it to be. For one, half the women in the place are old and fuck-ugly, and second, she's got to pick someone in the clique otherwise Franky might rip her tits off or something.

Anya from the kitchen whistles loudly when Kim walks into the room and Mariana immediately sidles up to her, but Mariana ignores her. Her mama used to say, when that girl's got something on her mind, she doesn't let go until she gets it. 

"Hey," Mariana says, thrusting out her cleavage. "Come to check on the goods?"

Kim laughs. "Yeah, something like that. The Gov's coming by today, so Franky's behaving like something crawled up her butt and died." She grimaces, then hops onto the counter, grabs an apple slice and shoves it into her mouth, grinning when Janice belatedly slaps her hand away. "Not something I really want to be around."

"So you'd rather be around me?" She preens.

Kim gives her a look, like she doesn't know what's going on with her either. Well, yeah. On the other hand, that scar was really hot.

"Everything go well with the delivery?"

"Sure. No incident to report, puta." Kim gives her a look again. "What? It's a form of affection, or whatever."

"I bet," Kim says. She's making moves to leave when Mariana touches her arm. Her skin is soft. No one's skin is soft around here, but Franky takes care of her toys. But she's been obsessed with that Governor woman since Mariana's been here, so she figures...

"You wanna stay, help out or whatever?"

"Or whatever," Kim mimics, but her face is relaxed, agreeable. Her shoulders slump a little; she takes a look around the kitchen, then plucks the blunt-edged knife out of Mariana's hand. "Sure, why not," she says. 

Mariana can't repress a little shiver of satisfaction. She's always liked getting her way. 

*

Everything looks the same, is the first thing Erica thinks when she sets foot into the prison: same dark walls, same endless corridors, same barbed wires, same dirty looks from the women behind the fence. She berates herself for the thought: why would it have changed? It was a week ago, but it feels like a decade. Carl smiles at her at the door; Erica smiles back, reflexive. He hands her a visitor's pass and she takes it, hands numb.

They lead her into the corridor and Erica can't help feeling the in-between itching under her skin, can't help thinking – is that what being a prisoner feels like? Of course not. She wants to take to her heels, save herself and run, make it out before the hook gets deeper into her skin. But she knows what Franky would say – and when was it that Franky became that voice, the devil on her shoulder? -; she would say, _don't fool yourself, Erica. You're in too deep._ She would say, _there's no turning back now._

For once Erica almost agrees.

*

"So what are you going to do once you're out of here?"

Liz has to surreptitiously take a look around them to make sure the question is addressed to her. But there's no-one else within earshot, and though Simone isn't looking at her, her bulldog eyes trained on the girls playing baseball, young – and impressionable – enough that a glare is all it takes to terrorize them, it was her voice Liz heard. She picks a used plastic bottle out of what passes for a flowerbed, crumbling yellow grass left from that bitch of a summer.

"I don't even know if the parole's gonna go through," she says, cautious. She was there to nurse Toni after the boiling water incident. You do what you gotta do, that's what Franky said when Liz mentioned it in conversation, but Liz doesn't agree. 

Simone snorts. "Oh, come on, we all know you're Princess Do-Gooder down here, even if you like your booze. Who doesn't?"

(The first time, after rehab, Liz went to AA just to know that there were other people, people like her, who hid bottles under their bed and walked around their garden at night, guzzling down subpar whiskey. But then, this isn't the real world.)

She shrugs. "Maybe Vera'll want to make an example out of me, show how much tougher than Davidson she is." She hesitates. "Why do you care, anyway?"

"I don't. Just wanna know who I'm playing with."

"We're not playing," Liz says, knee-jerk, even as the voice in her head – the voice of reason, she used to think, but lately she's not so sure – tells her to shut up, that it's not worth-it, she'll be out of here soon. 

Simone doesn't jump. Since she left Bea, she looks calmer, like she's waiting for something, all her rage coiled back inside her. She laughs, a loud bark. "Maybe you aren't," she says, and she points a thick finger in the direction of the basketball court, where Franky's just strutted in, her grin wide and sharp, "but she is. And she sure wants to win."

Liz swallows it in the silence.

"So," says Simone after a few seconds, "any plans?"

 _Drink until I fall down, and something that doesn't taste like toilet cleaner,_ is what Liz really wants to say, but she can't, so instead she mumbles, "I'm going to try and make people forgive me."

This time Simone really laughs. She bends forward, her hands on her knees. When she stops she grabs a piece of metal Liz hadn't noticed was sitting under her thigh on the bench and stands up, twirling it between her fingers, the corners of her mouth still quirked up. "Yeah," she says, walking away. "Good luck with that."

*

Mariana exhales noisily. "At least we get this," she says, sucking on her cigarette like she's starving. She is, kind of. 

Kim laughs. "Thanks to Franky."

Mariana rolls her eyes. "Bullshit," she says, and then when Kim turns to shoot her a glare of warning, she abates, "sure, whatever. She could score us some pot, though," she grumbles, twisting her wrist. Ashes scatter on the floor. She'll have to clean that up later. " _Coño._ "

"If she hadn't taken you in..." Kim lets her sentence trail off. 

"What? The bad women would have eaten me whole?"

"Something like that."

Mariana lays back, the metal of the counter cold against her skin. Her shirt rucks up, and she shivers, oversensitized all of a sudden. All that not doing drugs thing is fucking up her system. "What are you anyway," she says, pouting a little, "her attack dog?"

"Nah," Kim laughs. "That's Boomer. Or, well," she crushes the cigarette butt underneath her shoe, "Simone, I guess, now."

"Yeah, what's that about?" Mariana asks because, well, Simone is seriously creepy. All that staring and not saying anything… not to mention the rumors about some of the things she's done. That shit does not make you want to make friends. 

Kim doesn't say anything. 

"All right, top secret, whatever," Mariana says. She's kind of annoyed, but it's not like it's going to change anything. Drug mule once, drug mule forever, she can't help but think. "What about you?"

Kim's head whips towards her. "What about me?"

Mariana takes a long drag of her cigarette. She's got to finish it, on the off-chance that the guards will actually give a shit this time.

"I mean, what's she done to make you follow her like that?"

Kim bristles a little; just a little. "I don't follow her. I just go where she goes."

Mariana laughs. "Whatever helps you sleep at night." She breathes out, thick white smoke. God, that feels good. "She must eat pussy like a fucking champ."

Kim laughs out loud. It's a surprisingly nice sound, not that Mariana cares or anything, but she wouldn't mind fucking someone who laughs like that. "Yeah, she does." She leans towards Mariana, mischievous. "And hers tastes like peaches, too."

Mariana scrunches up her nose. "Ugh, forget I asked."

"That's not why I do it, though," Kim says, stretching her arms. Her breasts tighten under her shirt. "She's a good person."

Mariana snorts. "Yeah, sure. Lotsa good people in this dump. Your girlfriend's bound to get a gold star for all that drug dealing she does."

But Kim just arches an eyebrow, as though to say, _you can talk_. Well, yeah. "She is," she insists quietly. "Just wait and see."

"Look, it's not like I'm going to be sticking around for that long," Mariana says, and ignores the pity in Kim's expression because it makes something in her stomach turn sour. She swallows. "So… you exclusive?"

"Huh?"

"You and Franky. She fucked that governor, right?"

Something stormy takes over Kim's expression. "How am I supposed to know?"

"I thought you two were like this," Mariana says, making a rude gesture with her fingers. "So, do you fuck the girls who drop the soap?" She hadn't meant it like that, not really, but when she says it the image of Kim's scar jumps to her mind, the skin around it smooth and gleaming with water. What, so maybe Mariana fucked Tia back home, one night when they were high and horny. It means shit. This is different. This is survival. 

Which is entirely the reason why she slides off the counter and nudges the vee of Kim's legs apart. Kim's fast, Mariana's seen her fight once or twice, useless little brawls when Franky wasn't there to look over her; she's slippery and quick, all elbows and knees. But she's not used to it, and tonight she's mellow, unprepared. When she slips a hand in her pants to retrieve the fork Mariana knows is there Mariana slaps her wrist onto the metal of the table. 

"Do you?" she asks, as she presses closer. Kim's body is radiating heat. Usually Mariana isn't all that good at the seducing gig; she just opens her legs and it's enough, or she's too fucked-up to care. She's doing a nice enough job, though, or Kim seems to think so, because she tips forward a little, like she's magnetized. 

"I thought you didn't fuck girls," she says with a small smile, like she knows better now. 

"I'm also not a nun," Mariana says with a slight snort. She tightens her fingers around Kim's wrist, just to hear her pulse beat hard against her skin. "I can put up with pussy until I make it out of here."

Kim throws her head back and laughs. "That's the spirit," she says, her mouth wide, but when Mariana goes to kiss her – probably not a good idea to do this here, actually, but what the hell – she turns her head. "Not me, though," she says; she twists her hips roughly and before Mariana can ever formulate the thought she's the one whose back bangs against the counter, a sharp flash of pain. Kim's hand joins her wrists and squeezes hard, a warning, before she lets go. 

"Why not," Mariana hisses, frustrated, "are you faithful or something?"

"Or something," Kim says. "Maybe I just don't like you."

"What's that got to do with it?"

That's the thing about Kim, though, that Mariana likes and tends to forget: that she'll let you believe whatever you want about her, that because she's slight and cuddles up to Franky she can't hold her own; and then she'll hold a fork over your eye and tell you to be careful, you wouldn't want to get hurt. Mariana swallows.

"Keep up the good work," Kim says over her shoulder when she leaves, tugging a cigarette out of Mariana's pack as she does. Fucking bitch. What's prison for if even the women don't wanna fuck?

(She's not shaken up, not really, but if someone finds out that's her excuse for why she digs behind the flour, on the low shelf; there's no-one left in the kitchen and she stopped getting the shakes a week ago, withdrawal crawling back to nausea and that feeling of having bones made of jelly and rust half the time. It gets better, the high, when you've cleaned out – stronger, more powerful. The first line feels like heaven, electricity buzzing white and pure up her nostrils. Even if she wanted to raise her head to see if someone's looking, hiding in the shadow of the door, she probably couldn't. It feels too good, man – just too good.) 

*

It's late when the session with Liz ends. Erica can't help to be proud for her parole, even though it wasn't her doing, not really: but looking at her, her strong and determined face, and knowing that she had a hand in it, even just that little bit, reminds her of all those promises that she made when she got the job, about making things better and promoting rehabilitation. She glances outside; the night is falling behind the wire and the bars, boxing them in.

Funny, she thinks, if someone looked at her life now they'd say she's lost everything, she's back to square one, no fiancé, no job, nothing. Sometimes Erica feels like that too. 

"Everything's going to be okay," she tells Liz as she shakes her hand, trying to sound convincing. Liz pretends to buy it. 

Erica straightens her skirt. She's not used to that garb anymore, the too-tight lawyer clothes she used to strap herself into when she still went to court, barely out of law school. In fact she redid her whole wardrobe when she got the governorship, because it was something new, a step forward or some same platitude she served Mark; he frowned at the expense and told her she was being anal-retentive.

The corridor is empty when she leaves the library, everyone at dinner. Erica breathes in. She hasn't missed it, that tight feeling in her chest, like she's always being watched, like what she's going to do next is going to determine her whole life, like it's all a game of cards. And she hasn't missed -

"I see you couldn't keep away," says a voice at her back, mocking and tender, "Gov." The stress on the last word is so familiar Erica can almost see her mouth shaping around it, tongue tracing the seam of her lips. "Or can I call you Erica now?"

She turns around. Well, that was bound to happen. "Franky."

Franky rests her a hip against the wall. "How the mighty have fallen," she says softly. 

And yes, it's true – that the air feels like it's thrumming between them, that biting her lip hard enough to draw blood is all Erica can do not to reach out, that she felt so calm and now she feels so angry, like she could shove Franky against the wall and break her, for once, instead of always being the one who gets broken. Or maybe - 

"Missed me?" Franky asks, and it's probably supposed to be snarky but it comes out unbearably honest, like she really wants to know, that particular form of truth-seeking Franky is so good at. 

And Erica only has one defense against it; what she does best, even though it never works. "Stop this," she says coldly. But she doesn't move away, not even when Franky takes a step closer. _Maybe you're the one who can't keep away,_ Erica thinks, but she doesn't say it. Bite your tongue. Who knows what she would do; who knows if Erica could take it. 

"Stop what?" Franky says, grinning her signature shit-eating grin. It makes Erica want to punch her or maybe kiss her breathless. "I'm not doing anything."

But she is – she's touching Erica's collar like she was never mad in the first place, like just last week they didn't fuck their brains out and then scream at each other, like Erica didn't accuse her of being the criminal everybody says she is and Franky didn't accuse her of turning a blind eye and pretending living in Wentworth is a cakewalk. Like it's burning her, the need to touch. She rights the fabric, fingers brushing Erica's neck. Erica can't suppress a shiver. 

It lasts a long time, long enough for Erica to wonder why Franky sneaked off at all, what she was doing at this hour, with who, dealing what. It's not her problem anymore, except for how it is, it'll always be. You don't forget things like this, Erica knows - she tried. Franky looks into her eyes and there are a thousand things in there, some that Erica can read and some she can't: naked lust and anger and sadness, and that grim desperation Franky gets every time she's going to do something stupid. 

Eventually she lets go of Erica, patting her neck once before taking her hands away. Erica feels like she can breathe again, a molten weight lifted off her chest. 

"It was crooked," is all Franky offers in explanation, even as she turns her heels and starts walking away. Always got to have the last word, Erica thinks, dazed. "Good night, Gov." She turns one last time, her eyes gleaming hard and promising in the half-darkness. "Dream of me."

*

Everyone's afraid of something. Simone learned that young, before she even touched her first knife, before she learned how to hurt people, really hurt, the kind of wounds that don't ever really heal. She's always had a good memory. 

The kid is buzzing when Simone bumps her with her shoulder, not hiding it very well. "Hey," she says as she stumbles a few paces to the side, eyebrows furrowed, curling in a fighting stance. 

Simone squares her shoulders. "Come on, honey," she says. "You don't want to fight me."

Uncertainty flashes in the kid's eyes, and it's almost too easy: Simone pounces - she does that well -, flattens her against the wall, a hand around the kid's throat.

She struggles a little, weakly. "What – what do you want?" she croaks, fingers grasping at Simone's hand. Simone just squeezes harder.

"I need you to do something for me – what was your name again?" The kid opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Amazing. Simone could say she hasn't missed this, but she'd be lying. She doesn't do that, much. It's useless in here; and besides, no one cares what she has to say. "I need you to do something for me, kid."

This time she just nods, her face and eyes red. Good.

"You know what I used to do outside?" she says, because what the hell if she wants to have a bit of fun. At least Jacs was entertaining. Franky's crones are nothing but a bunch of pussies, when it comes down to it. "I trained dogs. Yeah, I know, but you learn things. It's not that hard, once you get the hang of it. You repeat something over and over until it gets through their thick skull, that's how you get them to do something. The trick, though, is that you've got to put the fear of God in them. Show them the consequences." The kid's eyes widen. God, Simone thinks, this is almost too easy. "You understand?"

She nods once, then a second time, and Simone lets go, fingers uncurling just that little bit so that the kid can swallow a greedy lungful of air. Simone closes her hand into a fist, counting in her head. At three, her fist collides with the kid's stomach, knuckles first, and she collapses on the ground, knees raised in front of her. There's blood in her mouth, at the corner of her lips. Simone gives her a second she wouldn't have spared if this was a real fight, a fair fight, and the kid gets onto her knees; her face would look determined if she wasn't so out of it. 

"What do you want?"

"First, I want you to keep doing what you're doing. Unlike some other people," she crouches to get at the kid's level – Mariana, she remembers belatedly, that was her name, "I don't give a shit. Get as fucked-up as you want, shove it up your ass for all I care. Doyle wouldn't like you sniffing her merchandise up your own nose, though, right? So you do what I say, and we're cool."

Mariana glares. "What do you want?" she repeats. 

Simone stands back up, stuffs her hands in her pockets. "I want you to get something for me."


End file.
